


Powers 'R' Us.

by darlingjongin



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - MAMA (EXO Music Video), Alternate Universe - Still Have Powers, Comedy, M/M, Multi, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-21
Updated: 2018-11-10
Packaged: 2019-03-22 04:05:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 72,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13755945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darlingjongin/pseuds/darlingjongin
Summary: Aliens from different galactic backgrounds find themselves at the wrong place and at the wrong time. Despite their differences, they must team up to find their orbs and get their powers back or else they're all fucked.





	1. Boomerang!

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the Power mv. Previously uploaded on my aff account.
> 
> reach out to me:  
> twitter & Instagram: darlingjongin

 

** Boomerang! **

 

 

_Playlist one:[boomerang](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPKmB56RwIo)_

 

* * *

 

For the times that the Commander has screamed to his Generals to find his son, this has been the most infuriating. After blowing up one of the spaceships in his army base, he has commanded all eyes watching his troublemaker of a son, but even with five hundred professionally trained soldiers focusing on the boy, his son still managed to run loose from them.

‘General Chen! Get in here now!’ he wails as he grips his stacks of paperwork, throwing it to the wall in utter frustration. It had been two hours since they have lost sight of his son, meaning he could be anywhere on this planet causing mayhem.

‘Yes sir’, in walks in his most trusted second in command, bright and intelligent, he knew he hit gold the moment he saw this young man in battle. Without a shadow of a thought, he instantly kicked out his son in his force to hire Chen and he did not regret it.

‘I need you to go look for Kai. Now. Before he blows up another ship or worse…’, he points to the door, handing him over a taser gun which rested lightly by his belt.

‘Yes sir’, and with that short meeting, Chen is once again running across the plane trying to look for Kai.

‘Dude, where are you going? We’ve got training’, a fellow soldier notices their General walking away from the base, guns rested by his side and a glum expression on his face. The brown uniformed men turn back to call for their General.

‘What does it look like’, Chen shouts back, holding the Commander’s personal taser. The men around the base have known the hot mess that was Kai, even having worked with him during the time he used to be the second in command in their force. Chen huffs out in annoyance, climbing over his small ship, fit for barely two people as his old one was in repairs after – you guessed it – Kai blew it up trying to get away from him and his father’s grip, ‘Right, let’s see what we’ve got here’, Chen whispers to himself, pressing the engine button and trying to familiarise himself with the new controllers of the ship.

 _Dammit._ He’s only got three settings of defence, one of fire and two of guns. He used to have a total of twelve defence settings in his old ship.

‘Oh well, I’m picking up Kai, not a prisoner’, starting up the engines, his ship begins to hover, leaving the tightly secured army base of EXO Planet, the strongest force in the Universe and flying over to the central city of the planet. He types in the co-ordinates of the furthest Galactic Bar, probably finding Kai pissed drunk and trying to pick up foreign aliens.

‘Accept the position, Chen. It’ll be fun, Chen. You’re going to be doing cool shit’, he mimics his old colleagues who persuaded him to take the job offer a couple of years ago when the Commander himself stepped inside their bunk, handing him the paper and shaking his hand. He couldn’t lie, he wanted to take the job immediately and it didn’t take much persuading for him to accept the offer, but he didn’t know babysitting was going to be part of the agenda.

‘Let’s just get this over and done with’, he whines to himself, stirring the wheel and flying out of the base, pressing the lightyear speed setting and zooming pass the city into the cracks of the waste pits of the planet, where Kai probably is.

And Chen was right. A tall handsome alien, dark hair swaying and skin glossed and tan, strolls through the streets of central EXOdus, gamblers throwing chips in the air as they lost another game, drunk men and women decorating the streets, filling the market with screams and a stench which eludes to the smell of shit and rotten chemicals; a place of pure anarchy, Kai’s favourite place.

‘Hello there’, a lady, barely clothed purrs at him, her green scales touching the commander’s son’s arms, sending shivers down his spine.

‘Hey, babe’, he smirks at her, eyes playfully flirting as a swoon of ladies follows his trail, seeing his handsome face and uniform, they knew he’s a big deal. The band of women wraps themselves around him as the market turns violent, a gunfight happening in the centre of the black market. Flipped boxes of food and laser shots fired around them, causing the already noisy market to be brought to life with gun shots and screams.

‘How about we find a quiet place, my ladies’, he shouts to the girls around him, smirking as they moan a yes, hands prying all over his torso, the sleeves of their dresses clambering down their shoulders, hues of purples and reds mixing as their eye colour changes whilst they stumble inside a small building.

 

 

 

 

‘Watch it kid!’, a man with hard metal skin pushes the boy back, making him fall to the ground, a cardboard box of spare metal spilling to the floor.

‘I’m so sorry’, he murmurs, bowing his head as his chalked hands tried to scavenge the metals back inside the box, hands touching the wet cement, it was probably spitting or other substance D.O did not wish to think. He’d never thought he’d be living in the most disgusting place in the whole of the Universe, but here he was, kneeling in front of a beat-up alien, hench and stiff with eyes red as blood and belt decorated with different kinds of knife, some still had dried blood on it.

He quickly drops all the metal back in the box, his small figure trying to push past the crowd of people as he gets up. He didn’t mind the fact that he was short, but he hated once he arrived in EXOdus, where everyone was either big or tall or both, eyes frightening and weapons even more so. The moment he arrived, he was already mistaken for a little boy and people tried to kidnap him to sell his parts to the black market, good thing that despite his thin frame, he has the power of Force, so before anyone can lay a hand on him, they’re already racing away with two broken arms. His feet stumble upon the crooked ground as he hears the shoots of guns and laser guns emitting at the centre of the market, burying his head down, trying not to get hit and accidentally die whilst at work. Ergh, he hated this place.

Why was he here then? Well, D.O who loved the idea of working in the elite force, becoming a mechanic in the famous Commander Kim’s army base was something he has always wished since the moment he can utter a word. Living a small life in one of the smaller planets, his parents and everyone around him were content in fielding and farming for the rest of their days, but not D.O, he knew he was destined for greater things, much more than picking up wheat and raising robot cattle. Destiny his ass. Because of where he comes from, he had a shit resume compared to all the other soldiers competing to work for Commander Kim. He was left jobless and homeless, with nowhere else to go as the EXO Army rejected his application. He didn’t know why he got rejected, he was the best mechanic on his planet, albeit, his planet consisted of less than 500 aliens and most of the stuff he was building were machines to help his parents farm the land easily, he didn’t per say build any weapons of mass destructions or spaceships, but still, he did build something. Anyway, one thing led to another and he found himself trying to look for work in the main city, being pushed aside until he found a man willing to hire him to work at his Junkyard Shop in the outskirts of the main city. He didn’t know it was a Black Market, but he needed the money so fuck it. He misses his parents every day and for the life of him, he just cannot get used to the horrible stench of EXOdus market. He didn’t even know where it comes from, but he believes that it has the power to kill people – that’s how horrible it is.

‘Boy! What took you so long?’, id the first thing he hears after escaping the wretched crowd and slipping through the cracks of buildings, finding his way to an old shop on the outskirts of the market, a shop filled with shit in his opinion, but to his boss, it’s filled with heaven. Scraps of metal and broken pieces of spaceship gears is what his boss sells, which at first, he thought was useless but upon his first day of work, he realises just how stupid these aliens are. Idiots would stroll in asking for parts for their broken ships and vehicles, one time, D.O saw a guy with one arm strolling in asking for a spare metal part for his arm.

‘There was a fight in the central market-‘

‘There’s always a fucking fight in central, that’s not an excuse boy!’, his boss smacks him on the head, snatching the box off him, gleaming at the new stock of junk, snickering as he lifts a particularly new looking scrap of metal, his phlegm-filled laugh making D.O grimace. If his boss laughs anymore, he’ll be throwing up more than his viscid fluid.

‘Good, good’, he whispers to himself, voice hoarse as he inspects his new products, ‘Now go fix my vehicle’, he orders his apprentice, dismissing him with a small wave of his hand, not even bothering to look up. The boy sighs in defeat, grabbing a towel which hung from the bars of the reception desk, going down the flight of stairs made up of rusted metal and wastes materials, finding himself down the garage where an old beat up four-wheel drive rested, in need of death more than fixing as D.O opens it up to find the engines completely tarnished. Damn. He just fixed this last week, what the fuck was his boss doing in his spare time?

 

 

 

 

 

‘Oh, come on, I paid for my drink’

‘Sir, you didn’t. I’m not stupid, I saw you leaving your table without paying’, the bartender with massive glasses wraps his small hands on one of the costumer’s tentacles, trying to make him pay for his drink. Suho had been working in the MAMA Bar for almost two years and he’s getting sick and tired of idiots strolling in and thinking they can get away from paying.

‘You are one annoying bartender’, the alien pushes him back with his other fourteen tentacles, purple slime emitting from his skin as he flings Suho to the wall and sticking him there with his slime. Spitting in the annoying bartender’s direction, he strode off, leaving Suho stuck on the wall with the remaining costumes looking at him and laughing.

‘Mr Suho, next time, please don’t piss him off’, his fellow coworker comes to the rescue, carrying a shovel and already trying to get the slime off him.

‘He didn’t pay for his drink, what am I supposed to do? Let him walk off?’, he complains, moaning as he feels the sticky substance seeping its way under his shirt. God, what the hell is this slimy thing anyway?

‘Just leave it next time. You’ll start a fight in the bar and boss will not be happy’, she whines, putting more strength as the slime slowly solidifies around Suho. She had heard of Suho the moment he stepped in the bar two years ago. His skin was still decorated with bruises and scars, eyes bloodshot red. He was in the news – well, his spaceship was. Captain Suho of the Boomerang ship had faltered from his pedestal after a failed mission, leaving him jobless and without a team, his ship stolen from him, leaving him to seek sanctuary in EXOdus Black Market. At first, the crowd couldn’t get enough of the fallen hero working in one of the bars, constantly coming in to sneak a peek, for a while, it was good for business, but as usual, over time, news becomes old and so did Suho. He now causes customer to leave rather than to attract them as his perfectionist ass always comes forward to complain to their customers, whether it was for not leaving a tip or other little things. All she wants right now is for Suho to act normal, at least not like a dick.

‘When I get my hands on that tentacle jerk, I swear… I’m going to kill him’, he huffs once the slime was scraped off him, feet landing to the ground and uniform completely covered in purple substance.

‘Hey! Where can I get a drink around here!’, shouts another customer, banging the table to get attention.

‘Hold up! Can’t you see we’re busy here!’, Suho shouts back, sighing in defeat, flicking the rest of the slime which stuck to his shirt.

 

 

 

 

 

‘Look, I need that book, it holds the information about the beginnings of the Red Force and if I don’t read the shit out of it, am I really a Rabbi?’, Xiumin shouts over his intercom, stepping out of his vehicle and being welcomed with a stench he couldn’t put a name to, but he knew if death had a smell, it’ll smell nicer than this.

‘You’re buying a banned book which has been burnt by the EXO’rdium Government and you’re buying it in the biggest Black Market… What if someone sees you? You can lose your job!’, he hears his colleague scream at him over the phone, but he dismisses him, persuading Xiumin is out of the question, when he wants something, he will get it by any means. Being a Rabbi was no swift work, he had to make sure the intakes all history known in EXO planet and the whole Universe that they belong in, being trained at such a young age to understand everything, Xiumin is wired to yearn for knowledge, trained to understand everything, from the movement of one cell to the creation of a new element, so it came to no surprise his sudden dire need to understand the understandable; The Red Force. The whole galaxy knew of the Red Force, but they didn’t know who or what it was. It was known as a force of evil, elements which bound together to form an evil being which seeks blood and death, but that sounded too much like a myth from a children’s story rather than a fact about the thing that’s been terrorising their planet for decades. It has been responsible for the deaths of millions and the destructions of planets.

‘We do not need to know about the Red Force!’

‘Yes, we do, it is part of our history and is the reason why we’re all living in terror. We need to understand what it is and what it wants from us to be able to defeat it’

‘Defeat it? Xiumin, we’re teachers, not soldiers’

‘We are soldiers. We just prefer to use books than guns when fighting’, he hangs up the phone before his colleague can utter another word, eyes scanning the noisy market as he pushes to pass a crowd of drunkards, trying to look for a specific bar. He looks down to his EXOphone, scrolling through the messages to find the specific one.

 

_MAMA Bar @ the EXOdus Market_

_18.45_

_12,000 chips - cash only, no transfers._

 

It’s a simple message, very demanding by the looks of it, but Xiumin didn’t mind, as long as the fella has what he’s looking for than he didn’t mind looking oddly suspicious as he walks to the bank asking for 12k worth of chips.

‘Now, Mr Scavenger, you better have what I’m looking for’, Xiumin whispers to himself, bring a beret hat to hide his eyes from anyone passing by. There’s one thing his co-worker did get right and that is if Xiumin, an official employee of the EXO’rdium Government is ever found strolling this hell of a place, he won’t be leaving it anytime soon. He pulls down his hand and stretches the sleeves of his shirt to hide his hands, smiling as he sees the neon signs of ‘MAMA Bar’ etched in a rundown building.

 

 

 

 

 

‘I can’t believe we’re being sent down here’, a pair of guards’ whine, one busy tying her hair as she sees a group of gamblers throw waste at each other. This place is a dump. Being ushered to try and arrest a criminal here is like throwing them in a cockroach-infested pit and asked to pick out the one with six legs – yes that’s right, it’s close to impossible to do.

‘Maybe this is another test? They barely send down guards here unless something big happens, so they’re probably just making sure we still got it’, a tall guard with short dark hair and pale skin swings his laser gun around, whistling as he sees foreign aliens walking pass them. He’s ever seen so many people and in such diversity, ‘Look, there’s an alien with fifteen tentacles! Ew’, he taps his partner’s shoulder, intrigued by the different people, looking with wide eyes like he was at the zoo.

‘Sehun, focus! We’re looking for a Galactic Scavenger, goes by the name of Baekhyun’, she looks down on her EXOphone, typing in a passcode which opens up a holographic photo of the man, his black hair covering the front of his face, glaring and holding a gun over his shoulder.

‘Oh, and he has some side kick creature running around with him’

‘A creature?’, Sehun looks over to the hologram, hands hovering above it, gesturing to the left to move the picture, focusing on the four-legged creature by the criminal’s side, pure white and quite massive as it sits by the man’s side, almost up to his waist, ‘What is it?’, Sehun squinting his eyes to get a closer look at the hologram, pinching his fingers to zoom closer, he’s never seen such a creature before.

‘It’s apparently known as a wildcat, a creature only breeding in Planet Earth’

‘Planet Earth? He’s been to Planet Earth?’, Sehun looks up in surprise, gleaming with excitement, forming a small spring in his step as he is about to arrest a criminal that’s delved in Planet Earth, one of the most known planets for its corruption and lack of knowledge of the rest of the Galaxy. He couldn’t believe upon learning about Planet Earth that they solely believe they are the only beings living in the Universe, that’s just bizarre, how could they possibly think only they can exist in this big ol’ universe.

‘Stop making too much noise, we need to execute this properly or our first mission will be a failure and I for one, do not want that’, his partner shuts her EXOphone, eyes scanning around, trying to look for a small face with pale skin and dark hair – but like previously mentioned, like trying to find a cockroach with six legs in a pit infested with cockroaches.

 

 

 

 

 

‘I want that thing’, a man behind the bar whispers, fingers delicately stroking his pet whilst the other elegantly holds his drink, eyes glaring with interest at the machine in front of him, slowly picking up is drink and pursing it between his lips. The bittersweet taste of whiskey jolts him awake, lips dry and dirt buried inside his fingernails as he just came back from another scavenging.

‘Want anything else?’, the bartender breaks his focus, wet rag wiping his table as the bartender moves closer to where he is. He hides his face with his hair, fixing his hat to be further down, he didn’t have the luxury to show his face, not when he has a bounty pinned on him. He didn’t know he stole jewellery from one of the Official’s wives and even if he did know, you best believe he would have stolen more.

‘No, I’m fine’, he brushes the bartender off, looking back to see a machine walking straight into the wall and falling down, only to stand back again and repeat his actions, ‘Actually, wait a minute…’, he calls back the bartender, bending down when he speaks, a voice in a small whisper, ‘What is that?’, he points to the machine once again who continues to bang himself against the wall.

‘Oh, him. That’s Chanyeol, he’s a cyborg. Half human, half machine, so he’s kind of special’

‘I bet’, he whispers, raising an eyebrow at the cyborg’s actions, now he’s turned around from the wall, but this time he’s bumping into a table, bowing an apology to the customer sitting before turning back to repeat his actions. Is he half human? He wonders how much it’ll sell in the market, probably a couple of thousands by the looks of it, but his behaviour and episodes of malfunction might notch it down, but only by a few hundred. Whatever, he’ll just get him fixed when he goes back to Planet Earth and maybe find a good mechanic.

‘Baekhyun?’, he hears the utterance of his name behind him, forcing him to freeze at first, but the man sporting a beret hat sits down in front of his, reaching his hand out to drop a bag and by the sounds of it, it was a bag of chips. Baekhyun smirks at the heavenly sound.

‘You must be Xiumin’

 

 

 

 

The Black Market is at its busiest during the night, and as the day breaks and the suns begins to set, the shining moonlight emitted from a dozen moons overtakes the night sky, the loud noises of the market only begin to get louder as the flickering artificial lights shine the gambler’s table and drunk’s bars. The market is at its loudest at night, so it’s not a surprise that not one creature noticed the small-sized machines crawling its way into the centre of the market, hiding behind the shadows, implanting small fused bombs in the surrounding of the town, waiting patiently for their master to pull the trigger and begin the war.

‘Oh babe, be careful’, Kai whines, kissing the woman in front of him softly, feeling her bite his lips as she moans in pleasure. He’s been here for quite some time and the girls still hadn’t had enough of him, not that he’s complaining. He’ll gladly continue as long as the girls are up for it, finger twirling her cloak as he slowly rips it off again.

‘Come here’, he hears another whine, grabbing him by the neck and twisting him to her attention, kissing his swollen lips, leaning in to give Kai more pleasure. But before the feeling of ecstasy overtakes him, a loud bang emits from outside, shaking the building to its core, the dust from every corner flying, tables and beds shaking along with it.

‘What the hell was that?’, he removes himself from the girl, turning around to where the windows are, peering into the open window and glancing at the flashes of oranges which decorated the buildings in front of them. Is that fire? He removes himself from the girls, grabbing his shirt as he goes over, wanting to get a closer look at what’s happening outside.

‘Hold up, what the fuck is that?’, he looks down to see complete bloodshed, the of the town being ambushed by some sort of robot, oval in shape and size of a spaceship, it crawls its way to the centre, killing everyone in its path, guns were hidden beneath the machine, it fires out directly at the people, leaving a trail of bloodied bodies. Looking around, the machine isn’t the only thing causing destruction, one by one, he sees building everywhere being struck down, rubble flying through the air as every loud bang signals the fall of another building, fire covering what’s left of it. He didn’t know what came over him. At this point, his main actions should be to run to his ship and get the fuck out of here, but instead, he races back, grabbing his pants and climbing down the stairs, half-naked and hands rushing to find his weapons. Once fully dressed, he teleports to the centre of the market where the machine was, shooting aimlessly in every direction.

‘Shit’, he sees an incoming bullet, teleporting on the other side of the market, ‘Right, let’s see what we have here’, he whispers, loading his laser gun to mass destruction, aiming at what seems to be one of the arms of this thing, a claw-like metal contraption which gnaws away at the ruins, like it was looking for something. He aims his gun directly at the base of the claw, one eye closed to get a more precise shot. And with the pull of the trigger, his laser gun shot out in fury, firing at the claw, detaching it from the machine.

‘Sweet’, he whispers, looking up to find that the machine has turned around, red circular glass looking down at him, ‘Oh shit’, he makes a run for it, but not before the machine takes fire in his direction, shooting out fire bullet at his direction as he sees trails of fire behind him. He teleports to the other side of the market, further away from the machine.

‘What the fuck! What is that?!’, he hears a scream beside him, looking down to see a small boy crouched behind a cement wall which must have been part of a building once, now laid in the middle of the market. The boy peers out and takes a look at the killing machine before ducking back down, covering his head with his hands as he begins to panic. He didn’t know what was happening. One thing, he was to carry a box of old scavenged metal from the trading shop, walking around the central EXOdus black market and the next he’s thrust a gun bigger than he is and asked to shoot the egg looking machine with metal claws and weird looking red lasers and guns ejecting from its mainframe.

‘Know how to shoot, kid?’

‘No… Not really’

‘Then this will be one tough ride’

‘Then can I just skip out?’

‘Come on! Let’s do this!’, explosions, bright lights, screams, rains of rubble and fire. Why, oh why did he thought leaving his small planet was a good idea? He closes his eyes for a moment, if he makes a run for it, he’ll make it to the other side of the market and be safe, right? He opens his eyes and looks up to see the man who handed him a gun running around, shooting the machine and trying to gain its attention. Why is the hell he doing that? He sees the machine make a violent turn, shooting in their direction now, clambering over the rubble to get to where they are.

‘Fuck’, he whispers as he closes his eyes shut, praying that he’ll live through this, ‘Ahhhh!’, he screams as he begins to randomly shoot with his eyes closed, standing next to the man who shouts along with him, but his aim was slightly better, perfect to be exact, with every shoot hitting the machine.

‘Come on let’s go! We need to fire out at least one of its guns’, Kai screams, grabbing hold of the boy and teleporting nearer to where one of the shooting guns are.

 

 

 

 

 

Chen parks his spaceship slightly out of the market, not wanting to gain too much attention with his ship being covered by the EXO Army Force logo. He knew he should leave his ship behind if he ever wants to escape this place alive. The night is young as he arrives, but everything else isn’t. As soon as his feet lands on the cold floor, the ground begins to shake and bursts of flames shot through the market.

‘What the…’, he looks ahead of him, seeing the short bursts of buildings after buildings exploding right in front of him. At first, he contemplated whether it was Kai’s doing, but as soon as he sees a massive machine crawling through the market, he knew it was something else.

‘Hold up… Holy shit’, he yells, seeing the mass amount of ammo the machine was carrying, firing away at every direction. Alright, this is serious, he climbs back inside of his ship, pressing the intercom whilst grabbing the nearest weapon he’s packed; a laser gun… That’ll work.

‘Hello?’

‘Yeah, hello, this is General Chen of sector 21, we need back up. Now!’

‘Where are you?’

‘In EXOdus Black Market. We’re under attack by a foreign invasion and I need you to send back up. Now!’, he screams over the intercom, hanging up as soon as he’s given the message, hands tensing around his gun as he sprints in the direction of the foreign attack, hand reaching out to form a lightning bolt, aiming up like a javelin stick and throwing it high up in the air, aiming the centre of the machine.

 

‘Sehun… Run!’, his partner yells, waving her hand out as she runs to the other side of the market, looking up to see another building falling to the ground between them.

‘Get out of here now! I’ll catch up later’, he shouts back, waving his faster to quickly run to their ship. They were separated by a pile of rubble and she’s the only one who can get to the ships in time, ‘Call for back up! I’ll hold it up here!’, he commands, gesturing for her to leave one more time before he lifts up the weapon that she’s dropped, both hands being occupied by machine guns, running in the opposite direction of her partner, eyes looking up, trying to find the thing which shut a whole building down with one fire.

The buildings around him re-engulfed in the fire, swallowing the whole city in red fury, the heat overtaking him, smoke decorating the night sky as the screams of pain continues. Ground still shaking, Sehun jumps up to grab a hanging plumbing which is still attached to one of the remaining buildings. Swinging his body up, he climbs up the building, hands clawing at the bricks. He makes it to the rooftop to see complete destruction. Everything is gone, faltering into the ground, moons shines red and the skies blocked with smoke and chemicals as the machine continues to emit fire into the market. He tenses his hands, eyes closed and breathing out softly, the wind intensifies, forming swirls of hurricanes as it drags the smoke into a spinning vortex above him. He shuts his eyes and clenches his fists one more time, reaching out to control the hurricane he’s just made, spinning his arms round and round and round as the winds spin with him. He opens his eyes and aims for the machines, throwing his wind towards it, seeing some sort of bolt hitting its side before his winds overtake it, making it tumble to the ground. Sweet. He looks around and jumps to the next rooftop, getting closer and closer to the machine.

 

 

 

 

 

‘Pleasure doing business with you’, was the last thing Xiumin said before the explosions started. He didn’t know what it was, but the moment he saw the machine crawling towards them, he knew this was his cue to run. Both he and the scavenger made a run in the opposite direction of the machine, the scavenger’s creature running faster than his master.

‘Holy shit’, Xiumin cries out as he sees the tumbling of buildings, blocking the path to his spaceship. Dammit. He sees the scavenger, who’s made it past the rubble, running in the horizon, not even turning back to help him. He spins around, trying to look for another way, but this was his first time in the EXOdus market, he knew jack shit about the interior of this place.

‘Dude, watch out!’, he hears a scream as he is pulled aside as the machine guns his direction.

‘Who are you? What the fuck is that? Does this usually happen?’, he emits a bunch of question the moment he spots his saviour, sighing in relief as he sees the EXO Army Logo sewn into the man’s jacket.

‘You best believe it doesn’t!’, another boy screams from behind him, shorter and hair messy, he held a gun in one hand but he had no official uniform.

‘Looks like there’s a foreign attack happening’

‘Foreign attack?!’, Xiumin yells, looking back to see the machine with odd colours of orange and white paint on it. It definitely wasn’t the colours of their planet, but a foreign attack? What planet would dare attack EXO Planet? Unless…

‘That’s the Red Force’

‘What?’

That thing is sent by the Red Force’

D.O laughs at the man, turning back at the machine and looking back at the man. The guy must be crazy. Why would the Red Force send a machine is the wastelands of EXO Planet? Surely, they’ll aim a bit higher than destroying the place EXO’rdium has being trying to destroy for years.

‘Wait… I think you may be onto something’, Kai whispers, disappearing from their hiding place as he teleports to one of the rooftops of the buildings, edging closer to the machine. He peers at the exterior, trying to find some sort of clue.

**_RF_05_ **

He reads the sign which was painted on the bottom of the machine, almost being buried by the smokes and black matter which covered the now scratched and dented machine. RF? Red Force. Of course.

‘Officer Kai?’, he turns back to spot a man with a Guard suit beside him, two laser guns rested on his hands.

‘Back up. Good, we needed some’, Kai smirks, gesturing for the guard to come nearer, ‘We need to kill that thing. It’s sent by the Red Force’

‘Red Force?’

‘Yeah, look down, it says RF_05. That thing must’ve been made by them to come down here’

‘What do we do sir?’

‘Well, like I said… We kill it’, he commands, pulling out his own gun, recharging it as he looks up to the soldier, ‘You ready?’

‘Yes sir’, Sehun replies, recharging both his guns before stopping at the edge of the rooftop, getting ready to jump.

‘Let’s go’

 

 

 

 

 

‘Where the hell is that man’, D.O panics, searching their premises, trying to look for the man who gave him the gun. He looks tough and skilled to fight, he needs to stick with him if he was going to have a glimpse of a chance living through this.

‘We need to leave now. It’s coming closer’, Xiumin grabs hold of D.O’s sleeves, trying to make a run for it, but he’s pulled back – quite violently, may he add – back to the wall.

‘I’m not leaving without him’

‘Then we are going to die!’

‘What if he comes back? And we’re not here!’

‘Oh, for fuck's sake, I’m leaving then!’, but before he can put words into action, they hear the loud bangs of bullet meeting cement as the machine finally crawls closer to them, spotting the two figures behind the wall and taking aim.

‘Shit… How are we going to get out now?’, Xiumin yell, looking over to see the machine reloading and walking closer towards them.

‘Wait, come on, I have an idea’, D.O looks down to find a massive piece of rubble on the floor, the size of a house behind them. He wedges his hands between the gaps, lifting it up in front of them, shielding them from the machine and its guns.

‘Let’s go!’, he screams, both making a run as the machine finishes reloading, taking aim at the moving rubble, shooting it with dozens of guns at a time.

‘Fuck’, D.O yells as he sees bits of the rubble tearing away from the impact of the guns and flames, ‘Run faster goddammit!’, he shoots out nervously, feeling the cement crumble in his hands, it won’t be long till their shield breaks down, leaving them exposed to the machine. Xiumin looks up to see the crumbling rubble, lifting his hands up to freeze the edges, trying to hold up their shield a little longer with his ice.

‘Over there!’, Sehun screams, jumping onto another rooftop of a half-crumbled building, aiming his guns at one of the weapons wedged inside the machine, taking fire after fire as he sees Officer Kai teleporting nearer to the machine, shooting at the other weapons.

‘Yes, bitch!’, Kai screams an explosion follows as he manages to destroy one of the machine’s flame throwers.

‘Yes!’, Sehun whispers as he joins Kai’s celebration, seeing one of the guns falter to the floor as it breaks away from the machine.

‘Kai! Kai! Get down!’, another scream joins the duo, Chen finally making his appearance, seeing the Commander’s son right in front of the machine. He tenses his hands to form another lightning bolt, this time, longer than the previous one, stopping to aim at the centre to where he hopes the brain is. Kai, for once, gleams in sheer happiness at the sight of his father’s second hand, teleporting to where Sehun is as he sees a flash of light pierce itself into the machine, Chen’s lightning bolt hitting pretty important part as the machine stops firing altogether, but he didn’t hit the core as the machine is still alive and moving, turning from Xiumin and D.O, red laser eyes zooming into Chen, reloading his gun to take fire at the man.

Chen didn’t know where to go to next, his surroundings were nothing but a pile of rubble and he knew he simply can’t outrun the thing. He tenses his hands to make another lightning bolt, hoping he’ll hit the heart this time. He hadn’t finish forming his bolt before the machine aims at him, ready to fire.

Flames wrap itself around the machine just before Chen can close his eyes to his fate, looking around to see flashes of orange and extreme heat around him.

‘Chanyeol, go!’, Suho screams, splashing water in the direction of Chen as he spots a man near the cyborg’s flames. After drinking the fuel which spilt from the bombed buildings, Chanyeol is now refuelled, his mind now calm and aware of his surroundings. He runs along with Suho, trying to look for an escape root around the torn down market, flashing his flames to every rubble that gets in their way.

‘You okay?’, they both turn to the man near them, running towards Chen as they try to run away from the machine that just wouldn’t fucking die. It has been shot, fired at, bolted at but it’s still crawling back up, reloading another set of defence.

‘We need to leave… Now’, Suho screams, grabbing Chen’s sleeves and making a run on the other side of the machine, being met with four other people, covered in dust and scars.

‘Kai! What is going on here?’, Chen screams, grabbing the Commander’s son and pushing him back behind him, worried that the machine might attack at any moment.

‘It’s the Red Force’

‘What?!’

‘I’m not fucking lying. That thing is sent by the Red Force!’, Kai screams, pointing at the machine and by this point, Chen doesn’t even care anymore, he just wants to live.

‘We need to leave, now! Kai teleport us out of here!’

‘But we have to kill it!’

‘No, we don’t. Back up is coming and if it really is the Red Force, then we can’t win!’

‘I’m with Officer Kai on this one sir, we need to kill it now before it makes its way further into the city!’, Sehun argues back, wedging between the two and taking Kai’s side.

‘Actually, I’d much rather like the idea of us getting the fuck out of here!’, D.O’s voice reaches a crescendo as he points to the machine, screaming for them to get the hell out of here and taking Chen’s side.

‘Guys, assessing the evaluation of both your plan, there is an 83% higher chance of us surviving if we follow this guy’s orders’, Chanyeol butts in, tapping Chen’s shoulders whilst looking back to throw a flame at the machine, trying to keep it down and distracted as the group argues with each other.

‘We’re killing it now’

‘No! We are not!’

‘Yes, we are!’

‘No! We are not!’

‘Will the both of you shut the fuck up! I want to fucking live so can we please get out of here!’, Suho finally butts in, screaming in frustration as he pushes the arguing men away from each other. Chanyeol, on the other hand, turns back to look closely at the machine. That’s odd. It’s retracted all of its guns away. It’s stopped firing. What is it doing now? Zooming his eyes into one of the machine’s trajectory, he witnesses the machine changing his defence into something different. Claws started to appear from the body, a ball of light emits itself from it, and with one switch, all hell breaks loose. The claws make a wretched high pitch noise, forcing them to crouch down in pain, guns on the floor and hands pressed against their ears, trying to get the sound away from them. The only person not affected is Chanyeol, he allows his transmitters to block the sound. Standing tall, he continues to analyse the claws, there is eight of them and why did they have a light on each of them? Wait… He recognises those lights, zooming in even closer, he saw the patterns of electrons inside the light. They were an element. A magnetical element which sucks the life source out of certain creatures, but in this case, their powers.

‘Everyone run!’, he screams, but it was too late, the light beams brighter as the noise screams louder, forcing all eight of them to crouch in pain as they feel their skin being ripped off of them, the pain jolting them to their core as their minds spiral into nothing, darkness engulfing them and their powers long gone.

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there are no official pairings in this fic and will mainly be plot line driven - therefore, pairings will shift and change depending on the plot (so the tag pairings may not be the ending pairings)


	2. 前夜

#  前夜

 

**_playlist two:[the eve](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZt1Nt2vWXM)_ **

 

* * *

 

Piles of rubble decorate the once infamous Black Market hanging on the outskirts of EXO Planet. Morning daylight gleams in hues of oranges and yellow, shining on the destruction which unfolded last night, isolated without a living soul in sight. Among the wreckage of wastes and dead bodies is the cautious steps of a scavenger, wide-eyed and disturbed, scanning around to find any signs of life as his creature walks steadily ahead of him, sniffing the grounds of wastes, wailing to his master that nothing good was here.

Baekhyun had seen a fleet of EXO air forces flying around the perimeter of EXOdus Market, but not one was commanded to fly over, he knew instantly why. They were scared. They didn’t know what was happening and by the sight of the red flashes of blood and orange flames, they didn’t want to know, so they did what Baekhyun thought the army did best. They hid until the destruction was over, only piling in centrefold and flying over when the killing machine was long gone.

‘Typical’, he whispers to himself, not really knowing why he was still here. A criminal with a bounty reward stuck behind his back volunteering to stay in the same vicinity as the ones who gave it to him, Baekhyun thought of himself as odd and slightly stupid, but if the army wasn’t going to do anything about it, he thought he should, so he turns, much to his dismay, ship landing back to the rubble space of where the old MAMA Bar used to reside. The EXO Airforce are still not flying around the centre of the market, just in case of any aftershock missiles they thought were left buried underneath the debris.

‘Anyone here?’, he shouts, hands beside his mouth as he screams to someone, anyone who may still be alive enough to wave a hand for him to pick up.

‘Meow’, his creature strolls back to him, eyes slightly adjacent as she gives his owner a defeated look. Even his feline companion couldn’t find any signs of life. Looks like no one had survived the attack. Sighing in defeat, he wavers for a moment, foot buried to the ground as he calls out one more time, waiting patiently for a reply, but just like before, he receives nothing but omnipotent silence.

‘Come on exLLE…’, he scratches his companion’s ears, turning around to the direction they came from, hearing from the distance the propellers of spaceship wings hovering; the Army must have finally pulled the stick out of their asses and flew over here. Baekhyun trips over a metal scrap, making him tumble, holding his weight to the remains of a building.

‘Help… Help me…’, he hears the whisperings of a deep hoarse voice, buried in sand and rocks. Baekhyun quickly turns his head at the noise, eyes trying to analyse where the source of the voice was coming from.

‘Go on exLLE, go find it’, he orders his creature whilst his hands clambers on every rock in front of him, lifting them one by one, trying to find any signs of skin or scale under the dust and debris.

‘Meow!’, his creature wedges her nose between two rocks, trying to separate them as she spots a hand twitching in pain.

‘I’m here. I’ve got you’, Baekhyun races over to where exLLE is, pushing the rocks off a man with blue hair, unconscious and bruises everywhere on his skin. He looked familiar to Baekhyun. He sweeps the dust from the man’s eyes, grabbing his spare oxygen packet he keeps beside his belt, turning it on and pulling the mask over to the man, trying to bring him back to life. He turns to his oxygen packet, raising the amount of oxygen, ‘Come on buddy, wake up’, nothing. Baekhyun clambers his hands up to the alien’s chest, fingers trying to detect where his heart is.

_Centre._

He feels the pulsing heartbeat, slow and unrhythmic, the man is close to dying. He presses his fingers together, pushing hard on the centre of his chest, pumping in beats of three, arms tensed and upper body muscles in full motion.

‘One, two, three’

_Pause._

‘One, two, three’

_Pause._

‘One, two, three’

‘Blurgh!’, the man pulsates up, mouth wide open as he breathes in a huge amount of oxygen, eyes quivering and hands twitches.

‘There you go’, Baekhyun breathes out, sighing in relief as he sees the man’s eyes shining bright, one red eye adjusting its robotic iris to the notions of the bright suns which reflected on him.

‘I am Park Chanyeol, number 61. I am made- I am Park Chanyeol, number 61, I am made to assist- I am Park Chanyeol- ‘, the boy’s voice is no longer deep and human, but monotone and expressionless, Baekhyun notices the twitching of the man’s body, malfunctioning after the stressful rebooting of his system.

‘Shh, no worries Park Chanyeol number 61, just rest for a bit’, Baekhyun picks up his pocket knife, cutting the cloth of Chanyeol’s shirt and sure enough, there were his reset buttons on the lower side of his left torso, ‘Let’s see what we have here’, there is a mute button, although, he didn’t think that’ll help the robot – ah! A sleeping mode. That’s perfect, that’ll give him time to reboot and systemise his brain cells and wires, ‘Get some rest’, he whispers, switching the button to see the man’s eyes falter into a peaceful sleep, hearing the noise of electrical wiring through the boy’s system.

‘Well done exLLE’, he smiles, gesturing for his creature to come closer, giving her a small peck on the side of her ears, happy that they have at least saved one person.

‘Blurgh! Oomphf! Help! Someone get this off me!’, Baekhyun hears another noise, this time louder and much closer to where he is, by the side of his eyes, he can see a small pile of rubble moving.

‘exLLE, let’s go! There are more people’, Baekhyun and his pure white feline races over to the moving debris, hands helping the buried alien underneath it, lifting each heavy rock and shoving it away.

‘Meow!’, exLLE races over to the other side, sniffing the surroundings only to race around the other perimeter to where her owner and the buried alien is, she smells more aliens, there was more buried underneath, ‘Meow!’

‘What is it?’

‘Meow!’

‘There are more people down here?’

‘Meow!’ This won’t so, Baekhyun slides his fingers around his belt, trying to find any useful mechanics he hoped he’s packed with him. Laser gun? Nope. Water extinguisher? Nope. Antigravitational trigger? Wait… That’ll work. He pulls the small gun like shaped technology, raising his hands up and pulling the trigger, sparking a light on the gun hole as it sucks the gravity away, lifting him and the rocks and wastes around him.

‘All mighty…’, he whispers in shock, seeing a group – no more than seven aliens – floating through the air, bared and broken, dried blood painted on their faces, clothes ripped and shredded, skin aglow in redness, swollen arteries, colours of purple and pink pulsating heavily, almost like something had ripped off parts of their skin. Baekhyun swims across the antigravitational air, grabbing the hands of each alien, centring them away from the rocks and piling them on top. He turns his trigger off, dropping to his feet as gravity is pushed back into the atmosphere, much to the other aliens’ dismay, they all, unfortunately, landed on their back, earning a painful seam of shock, awakening them from their deep sleep.

‘Ow... Son of an Exodus…’, he notices not one, but three of the aliens sporting the EXO Logo on their clothing, wearing the uniform of the cowardice army. Looks like not all of them are.

‘I can’t feel… I can’t feel anything’, one of them bends to his knees, coughing up purple blood, the rest slowly did the same, the sensation of blood running through their veins no longer be felt. Something happened to them, something that they could not relive, they could not retell and they could not recall, but they all knew, the moment they turn to see each other’s faces, to look at each other’s condition, the machine did something more than burn.

‘Kai… Kai… We need… We need to go back to the main base now… We need to warn them’, Chen breathes out in short hot gasps, trying to intake as much oxygen as he can but it felt like his lungs were shrivelled and bared, not doing their job properly as his head continues to spin in swirls, his surrounding at a state of constant movement.

‘Wait… Kai? As in, Commander Kim’s first and only son?’, Baekhyun turns to look at the man who is still coughing out blood, tanned skin etched in scars and dented with bruises and burns. Did he just save the Exo Commander’s son?

‘Warn them from what? What did that thing do to us?’, another one of them coughs out, right hand gripping his right torso where his heart resides pressing in a clockwise circular motion, using the basic trick in the book to try and circulate more blood and oxygen around his body. Wait a minute…

‘Xiumin? You survived?’, Baekhyun bends down to try and wipe away the small pebbles stuck between the Rabbi’s eyelashes.

‘I’m just as surprised as you are… What are you still even doing here Baekhyun?’, Xiumin coughs out, being the first alien to stand, ruffling his hair to get rid of the excess rubble. He looks over the horizon, analysing the damage done.

‘Wait… Baekhyun? As in… Bounty hunted, criminal scavenger Byun Baekhyun?’, a soldier in ripped uniform stands alongside Xiumin, hands scarred and bloodied, pointing at his criminal saviour, ‘I’m supposed to arrest you’, he whispers, coughing out the dust which stuck between his throat.

‘Sure, arrest your saviour why don’t you’, Baekhyun furrows his eyebrows, looking at the group of odd aliens, how did they all end up together like this?

‘Look, I don’t know what just happened, but something happened. I suggest we all need to be quarantined and get checked up. That thing might have implanted something on one of us…’, Chen scans each of their skin, acknowledging the oozing redness and burnt follicles which now decorates their arms and legs.

‘Quarantine? No thank you, I have work to do’, Suho chokes out, dusting his arms off the remaining debris and dust piled on him, shaking his body as he slowly regains his energy.

‘I agree on this man right here. I’m not going to be locked up’, another alien voice out, shorter than the rest but eyes glaring down in absolute anger and frustration as he looks around the only chance he had on living a normal life in EXO Planet. Now he’s officially jobless and homeless – once again – and he doesn’t need the extra stress of having to be isolated in a glass box whilst being stuck pins and needles in.

‘Look, General Chen has a point… We might have been infected with some sort of virus…’

‘Oh, so now you side with me? If you had sided with me earlier… Oh, Sehun of sector 94… Then we wouldn’t even be in this mess!’, Chen had to squint to see the remaining letters that were painted on his uniform, shouting at the soldier as memories of last night seers into his mind.

‘Look, we got off on the wrong foot, but- ‘

‘Wrong foot? Because of you, we’re most likely going to die of a foreign virus!’

‘Listen here General Chen, it’s not this boy’s fault, he was simply just trying to save-‘

‘Oh, don’t get me started on you Kai! If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t even be in this mess!’

‘Now, hold on just a second, I didn’t ask you to come and pick me up!’

D.O looks back and forth between the arguing officials, growing a distaste for the elites as they continue to whine like children, pointing the blame at each other whilst pushing and shoving everyone else. Ergh. And he wanted to be just like them. He was starting to rethink his life decisions. Maybe he should’ve stuck to farming…

‘We’re not going to die…’, the group of bandits turn around to see a tall cyborg monotonously approach them, one step at a time as his batteries are still not charged.

‘Chanyeol, what’s going on?’, Suho rips himself away from the arguing bundle, running over to the only person he knows, hands resting on the cyborg’s arms as he tries to shake him to speak.

‘The RF_05 did not implant a foreign virus into our bodies. In fact, it did the opposite, it took something away’

‘Something away?’

‘That’s right. Before the flashes of light and pain, I saw the electro-light that it was using the moment everything went dark. It’s a special light with the element of zenophroxide buried in its electrons’

‘Which means?’, Suho encourages him on, but Chanyeol’s face begins to twitch, malfunctioning the second time as his lips are still wide open, but no sound or voice emits from it.

‘Which means what?!’

‘Zenophroxide… That’s an element with the power to destroy the core of basic life forms’, Xiumin blurts out, mind already opening his boxes of knowledge, trying to figure out where he remembered that name specifically.

‘Wait… Destroy life forms? Then why are we still here?’, D.O looks down, hands touching his stomach, feeling the soft glazes of his hands against his torso. He’s still alive, he can feel it.

‘Because the Rabbi over there says it kills basic life form, and believe it or not honey, we’re not basic life forms’, Baekhyun voices out, staring at the each of them one by one, intrigued by such diversity in nature. These seven specific aliens are bounded together, all because of one accidental night. All because they were at the wrong place and at the wrong time. He couldn’t disagree that he too was in their troubled midst of a situation. He wrongly met a Galactic Rabbi in the most infamous Black Market in the whole of the Universe, he then decides to do a U-turn to try and save other people’s asses rather than his own and now he’s stuck mingling with a soldier, Commander’s son, a General and an EXO’rdium Rabbi. What are the fucking odds?

‘They destroy our powers. That’s the most basic element that our bodies can make, the mutational natural element which allows us to function differently from one another, our powers are our most basic life forms’, Xiumin reads from his mind like he’s reading from a book, looking down to his open hands, shaking in frustration as he tenses it. Over and over and over and over again. Nothing. His ice is lost. He could no longer make his frosts.

‘What? They destroy our powers?’, Kai shouts, mouth gaped and head shaking. He couldn’t believe what the man in front of him had just said, Destroy his powers? The only good thing which sets him apart from anyone? His powers which saved his ass millions of times. His powers which made him become one of the best fighters on the Planet. He shakes his head in disbelief, not believing a word. He’ll show him, he’ll show everyone that that statement is wrong. Tensing his body, he stomps his right foot in front, forcing his body to teleport to the other side of the rubble mess.

‘Officer Kai… Are you okay?’, Sehun whispers, index finger pocking Kai’s shoulder as he sees his Senior looking like he’s trying to take a dump.

‘What… Is it not working? Why aren’t my powers working!’, Kai spins around, tensing his upper body whilst jolting in a run, running around between the other aliens, screaming in frustration.

‘This is our Commander’s second-hand man?’, Baekhyun snickers, eyeing the screaming boy who runs along the empty centre.

‘Actually, I am’, Chen puts his foot forward, but Baekhyun only snickers at him, leaning on a wasted wall, arms crossed.

‘Oh really? Then you must be Kai’s older brother’

‘Actually, I’m not’

‘Older cousin?’

‘Um, no’

‘Well then, you’re not in the second command, unfortunately’

‘I am the Commander’s official right-hand man, thank you very much. I have fought alongside him over two very successful battles’

‘But you’re not blood. The Commander and his family have held their rightful place as the biggest controllers of the Army, making them the most frightening. You think the commander is going to slip that away because his son is slightly deranged?’, they both look at Kai, now at his utmost frustration, lifting a big rock and trying to throw it, only for it to land on his foot, making him scream in pain.

‘What exactly is your deal?’, Chen glares, stepping forward towards his saviour, not at all grateful anymore that this dumbass talker is the one who pulled him out of the dirt.

‘I have no deal. And unfortunately, you don’t either. Once that man over there fixes himself up, and trust me, he will, you’ll fall back into the ranks you once belonged in. Commander Kim did not hire you to be his successor. He hired you to be his seat warmer’

‘You better stay the fuck away from me’, Chen shoves the scavenger out of the way, hands gripping on the boy’s collar, eyes glaring in such a fury he never thought he could fathom.

‘Oh, look what we have here. Looks like we might actually have a fighter’, Baekhyun spits back, pushing Chen off him with all the force he can, gesturing for exLLE to stand back and not hurt the General.

‘Our powers are not destroyed’, they hear a deep voice from behind making its way towards them, Chanyeol stood before them, eyes gleaming red, expressionless but still alive, ‘The Red Force took it. It materialised out innate powers and form what are called orbs to contain it in. It’s going to use it against us if we don’t take it back’

‘And how exactly do you know all of this? You just woke up!’, D.O yells, pointing at all of the nonsense surrounding him. When will the real air force come and get them? D.O no longer has the patience to wait any longer. Not when he’s surrounded by these idiots.

‘I took the liberty of aiming one of my chips towards one of the claw before it turned on. I got broken during the process, but I manage to reinstitute the chips and databases from what little it found and if that information is the ‘little’, then I suggest we get a move on’

All seven of them stands in front of the cyborg, eyes reverting back to each other in confusion and slight disagreement. They didn’t want to believe Chanyeol and his slightly over the top claims and theories, but why did it feel like the boy was telling the truth.

‘You guys don’t believe me, do you?’, Chanyeol looks at each of them. Of course, they didn’t. He’s just half machine and half human, made to assist and be of service of the likes of these aliens, why would they listen to him. No one listens to him.

‘Look, Chanyeol, it’s not like we don’t believe you, it’s just… It’s too big of a claim…’, Suho approaches his usual costumer, who along the way became his sort of companion. Suho has known Chanyeol for nearly a whole year now, even helping him rent out a place when his master dumped him in the Black Market never to return again. Suho knew Chanyeol’s intelligence and its legitimacies, but still… Is the Red Force stealing _their_ powers?

‘I’m telling the truth’

‘Look Mr Cyborg, even if you are, then it makes more sense for us to quickly go to the EXO Army Base and plan a proper attack with proper back up’, was Sehun the only one thinking with logic? They can’t just all jump into a spaceship and fight the Red Force. There are men and women who were trained since birth to do that and they don’t come back alive from the battlefield.

‘Why, when we have us?’, Chanyeol was making little less sense as the fuel in his system slowly runs out, at least, that’s Suho’s excuse with justifying Chanyeol’s nonsense.

‘Look…’

‘We have three officially trained fighter right here’, his left eye zooms closer to each of the aliens’ faces, scanning their prints and opening up their data information with just a switch of his brain system.

 

**_Chen of Sector 21:_ **

_-skilled fighter_

_-mastered in martial arts_

_-skilled weaponry_

_-extremely well leadership skills_

_-fought in over three dozen battles and have lived and won through all of them_

 

**_Kai of the Lucky 88 clan:_ **

_-skilled fighter_

_-mercenary_

_-well known speaker – once persuaded a rival to join his side just for the fun of it_

_-kill counts of over 300,000_

 

**_Oh Sehun of Sector 94:_ **

_-trained since he was five_

_-skilled in sword fighting, archery, Judo, Karate etc._

_-has been the youngest soldier to be honoured the all kill during training – endure torture, execute a mission perfectly, kill 500 targets and rescue over 200 allies._

 

‘We have all the power we need in those three’

‘Right Mr Cyborg man, dude, whatever, that doesn’t mean we want to do it’

‘Of course, we don’t want to. We have to’

‘For the greater good…’, Xiumin whispers, engaging himself in an epiphany. If he himself has the opportunity to get close to the Red Force, then he’ll have the knowledge to know at least what it looks like, ‘I’m in’.

 

**_Xiumin; official Rabbi of EXO’rdium ministry of teaching, sector 99:_ **

_-trained knowledge of the history of EXO Planet since the beginning of history writing_

_-has written over 230 pieces of text which contribute to the research and discoveries of new weapons and politics_

_-a man of science, philosophy, literature and politics_

_-an advisory to all the high ranked politicians of EXO Planet_

 

‘Look, I don’t think you all know what you’re doing’, Baekhyun interrupts, waving his hands in the air to stop this madness, ‘First of all, you guys don’t even have a ship’

‘Yes, we do’, Chanyeol claims, facing the man with a white furry cat.

‘Oh, really? Where is it then?’

‘Over there. I believe you call it your Butterfly’, Chanyeol points to the horizon, gesturing in the direction where Baekhyun parked his ship.

‘Wait… Are you talking about _my_ ship? You’re nuts! Who said I’m going with you?’

 

**_Byun Baekhyun; lone wolf of the extinct Sa 04 Clan:_ **

_-can speak multiple languages_

_-have engaged and worked with over 300 types of species_

_-skilled mercenary_

_-has a spaceship_

 

‘What do you mean? You’re perfect for the team’ Chanyeol turns his head slightly in confusion, not being able to read the emotion from the furrowing man in front of him.

‘Are you crazy? Right, that’s it. You’re all fucking welcome, a huge thank you should be made for having saved you all. Now if you’ll excuse me… I’m going to go now’, he laughs, waving a goodbye to the group of idiots, whistling for exLLE to follow him along, shaking his head back and forth, disbelief.

‘Wait… Baekhyun, you have a 4.5 million chips reward on you… You’re walking away from two people who can take that away’, Suho turns, looking over at Chanyeol, noticing that despite his lack of fuel, the boy is trying to be taken seriously, and Suho for one, is starting to believe that Chanyeol might be up to something.

 

**_Suho; former Captain of the elite Boomerang spaceship, number 1 pilot:_ **

_-charismatic_

_-skilled talker and persuader_

_-leadership skills off the charts_

_-never gives up on anything – even at a lost cost_

 

Baekhyun stilled for a moment. That’s right. Kai and Chen, both high ranked officials, both in constant contact with the Commander himself, hell, one is the Commander’s son. Baekhyun purses his lips at the temptation, shutting his eyes tight as he tries to walk away, one foot slowly walking in front of the other…

Dammit.

‘One favour. One fucking favour and the bounty tag on me is off. Got it?’

Kai and Chen exchange a look. Are they really going to believe that the Red Force has their powers? Are they willing to go on a suicide mission under the claims of a malfunctioning cyborg? Usually, for Chen, that’ll be a big hard ass no, but something flickered in his thought. The argument he had with Baekhyun moments ago seeps back into his brain. If he really was just a ‘seat warmer’, then he’ll be deemed even more useless without his powers, leaving him to the only spiral downwards to the bottomless pits of the ranks. He didn’t know why he threw his logic out, but the moment his worst nightmare festered deeper in his mind at this moment, the more he made it turn into a close reality. He’s useless without his powers.

‘Alright. Bounty's off once you get us to and from the mission safely. Let’s go’

‘General Chen?’

‘Are you serious dude?’, both Kai and Sehun look up at their Senior General, not believing the irrationality in which Chen was acting on.

‘General, please, let’s think this through’

‘Sehun, we have no powers. We need them back. You think we’ll be able to work in the EXO elite base when we have no powers? This may or may not be the Red Force, but all I know is, I’m getting my power back whatever the outcome is’

‘So, are we all in?’, Chanyeol concludes, clapping his hands together as he finally wraps up what it seems to him was more of an induction than a recruitment.

‘Yeah, no. Whilst you’re going to space fighting machines who sucks powers off you, please drop me off at Planet 0.12 of the Mil Clan. I want to go home’, D.O raises his hands, walking over to Baekhyun with sad puppy eyes, completely regretting why he’d ever think of the idea of working in the Army. As of right now, his dream job is to be a peaceful farmer. Red eyes zoomed in on his face.

 

**_D.O Kyungsoo of the Mil Clan in small planet 0.12:_ **

**_-_ ** _skilled mechanic_

_-inventory fanatic – loves to invent new devices and technology_

_-can fix the unfixable_

_-no Techno and Mechno qualifications_

_-Failed the interview round of the Engineer position at EXO Army Base_

_-no real education_

_-no real training_

_-worked part-time on a farm – his parents owned it though._

 

 **‘** You’re a little less qualified, but it says you still have talent, so I don’t see why you shouldn’t come’, Chanyeol voices out as he finishes scanning the boy’s database, not finding much of a flaw, other than the fact that he didn’t get official qualifications for some of his skills.

‘That’s exactly it. I’m not qualified for anything’

‘Well, by doing this mission, you’ll sure be qualified for something after it’s executed, right?’

‘What?’, D.O stares at the robot, not really understanding what he was trying to say, but it clicked him a moment longer. If they succeeded in this mission, he’ll surely get the recognition he needs to reapply to work for the Engineering Base. Surely a mission which consists three office workers in the EXO Army is surely enough to at least get him in the first trials, right? Right?

‘One mission?’, he whispers, looking over at the others for validation.

‘One mission’, they all echo to each other, almost like a promise, like this will be the only time where they will drop their pride and differences and work together.

 

 

‘Stop touching that. Xiumin, what are you doing? Kai, get away from there! Oh my God, Suho give this boy some god damn fuel!’, Baekhyun has barely stepped into his ship for ten minutes and he can feel himself going bald by the number of times he’d ripped his hair out in frustration. He sees Xiumin touching everything like it was a piece of specimen, rolling his eyes as Chanyeol does that _thing_ where he knocks himself into a wall repeatedly... And to think they were doing this because of him... Oh God, what is Kai doing now?

'Kai! I swear to the MAMA high almighty, I will laser you if you touch anything else!'

He’s never had this many people in his ship before – actually, he’s never had anyone else other than him and exLLE in his ship before – so this is not only new but extremely frustrating.

‘Who says who could be in the co-pilot seat?’, he looks over to Suho, buttoning up his new shirt, which he stole from Baekhyun’s Scavenge Unit, yes, Baekhyun had a special unit where he stores all his findings.

‘Come on, I’m a Captain-‘

‘ _Were’_

Baekhyun gets a smack in the head.

‘All I’m saying is that I’m good with ships. I’m fucking fantastic so to speak’, Suho turns to scan his eyes over the dozens of settings Baekhyun has on his ship. It was neat, don’t get him wrong, but not as good as his Boomerang. Nothing was as good as his Boomerang, ‘Right, let’s see what we have here, three dozen of defence ammo, thirteen flight modes, three invisibility shields and oooh, a button of self-destructing, how very handy’, he turns to Baekhyun with a questioning look over the boy’s choices of settings. He didn’t even have one repair button, just in case the ship goes down mid-flight and needs to fix itself.

‘Don’t judge me whilst I’m letting you sit there’, Baekhyun whines, shoving Suho’s judgemental looks away from him.

 

‘D.O right?’, he looks up to see the man with the beret hat approaching him, being the only one to settle down in a seat next to D.O whilst the rest runs around and explores the ship.

‘Um… Yeah’

‘Chanyeol says you came from Planet 0.12. I don’t recall learning much about that planet’, Xiumin begins to converse, smiling as friendly as he can to the only awkward looking boy in the ship, keeping to himself and never really talking much unless spoken too.

‘Yeah, it’s a small planet’

‘Well, I heard you produce the best cattle’

‘Yeah… That’s pretty much about it’

‘Well, it’s still something. Cattle are used for different types of things. Your planet specialises in robotic cattle, which is very important. Did you know that the Great Scientist, Chinyoung discovered the electrons which allowed itself to fuse together to create the invisibility shield all from studying the movements of a cow’s heart?’

‘Wasn’t it a chameleon’s heart? Because of its camouflage?’, D.O corrects the all-knowing Rabbi who realised his small slip up just as he was being pointed about it, coughing embarrassment and scratching the back of his head, trying to laugh it off. It’s pretty rare for Xiumin the Rabbi to slip up.

‘Right… Well same thing. By studying what aliens think are useless, he still found something useful out of it. Maybe you’ll do the same too’, what is up with this guy? Seriously, he sounds like a therapist D.O can’t afford, talking about the meaning of life and small things and convenience of everyone and everything, D.O wishes for Xiumin to make his merry way away from him and go pester someone else with his bullshit philosophy, because all he wants to do now is go to sleep.

‘Right, Kai comes here, we need to gather up a plan. We can’t go anywhere empty handed. First, we need to find where the killing machine went, so I’m guessing, the closest place that we might find that answer to is…’

‘What place or person could possibly know where a Red Force machine is mopping around in?’, Sehun butts in as the three officials sit down around a small beat down a table, Chen grabbing a marker pen and drawing a diagram of each of their steps.

‘Think of total anarchy’

‘I have and as far as I know, it’s currently blown up in little pieces last night’

‘Wait… Think of the second-best anarchy’

Silence. The trio looks at each other, one eye gleaming as one has always dreamed of going to this place since he’s heard of it. The rival of EXOdus Black Market, home to all things miserable, pleasurable and desirable, the one place that has now become the number one total anarchy since the bombed EXOdus.

‘EX’act’, they whisper simultaneously, looking down to the piece of paper where Chen has written the name and coordinates of bold writing, underlined numerous times.

‘We get to EX’act, then we’ll know a person who’s seen the beast… Or at least knows of its whereabouts’

‘WOO HOO! Looks like we’re going to EX’act ladies and gentlemen!’, Kai screams in delight, fisting the air as he sees Chen giving in. No matter how many times Kai has slipped pass Chen’s fingertips, there is always one place, without a doubt, that Kai could not get his hands to due to Chen’s locks around his neck. That was the EX’act Black City, a Black Market in the neighbouring planet a couple of lightyears away, and now he’s going head first in.

‘Fasten your seatbelts, everyone. This’ll be one long ride’, Baekhyun announces, lifting up his goggles to rest on his eyes, pressing the lightyears setting with Suho checking the clarity of the atmosphere and the precision of the coordinates given to them by Chen.

‘Right, everything looks pretty perfect to me’, Suho double checks, fingers excitedly wrapping itself around the stirring wheel of the ship. This has been his first time riding the ship since he lost his Boomerang, to say the least, he was fucking excited to fly again.

‘Let’s get this show on the road, shall we?’, and with that, the Butterfly ship hovers out of the rubbles of what’s left of EXOdus, lifting off and slipping through the grips of EXO air forces as Suho skilfully mashes the invisibility setting to totality, flying pass official soldiers smoothly and right on the highway to space.

 

 

 

 

 


	3. 소름

#  소름

 

**_playlist three:[chill](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nefokc2K_3g)_ **

 

* * *

 

‘Are we there yet?’

‘Does it look like we’re there yet?’, Baekhyun shouts across his ship for the umpteen time, looking back to see Kai spurt out on the floor, face down, looking bored as he tries to play with exLLE.

‘Your pet is so boring’, he whines, trying to get the wildcat to follow his strings, but exLLE just looks straight at him, walking past the weird alien and next to his owner.

‘My creature does not play around’

‘Well, you must be boring than’, Kai throws the strings away, making it land on the other side of the ship where two official EXO guards sit in front of each other, head fully immersed in a game of cards.

‘Three of spades’, Sehun whispers, looking over to Chen’s fingers as he tries and guesses his rival’s cards, making him smirk as Chen puts down a card on the table.

‘King of hearts’, Chen follows up, making Sehun groan as he is forced to pull down another card on giving it to Chen. It’s been three hours and they’re still going. Much to D.O’s dismay, he has nothing else to do but to watch the two guards play the slowest and longest game of Lucky Ones’. He’s seen gamblers in the streets of EXOdus play this game, but he’s never seen one which lasted for more than an hour, granted, after about twenty minutes into the game, someone is most likely going to start a gunfight, but still, this game was taking forever to finish.

‘Good MAMA, just pull another Only One and be done with it!’, he screams as Chen carries on guessing Sehun’s cards when he got a perfect score right now. He’s got a King of Hearts and a Queen of Diamonds along with two aces. That’s a perfect Lucky One formula for a win, so D.O had no idea why Chen was continuing with the game.

‘Don’t be stupid, kid. The key to winning Lucky One is to stop the other player from winning by taking all their cards. The moment Sehun only has one card, then I win because then I’ve fully stripped him away from his Luck. It’s called Lucky One, not Quick One’

‘Oh, good MAMA, we have a proper player in the room’, Kai groans, rolling his eyes as he listens to Chen’s ongoing monotonous voice. He’s reminded of the times Chen has lectured him with that tone of voice.

‘It seems interesting that Sehun still has more than five cards on him. Chen has been pestering him for a whole hour’, Chanyeol observes, his left red eye flashing to zoom into Sehun’s pile of cards resting on his hands.

‘That’s because I’ve still got some luck’, Sehun whispers back, eyebrows furrowed as he concentrates on trying to out luck Chen.

‘Hey, try asking for an ace’, Xiumin whispers, eyes slowly leaving his book that he's still managed to protect from the attack, slowly being engaged on Sehun’s tactics.

‘No, if I do, he might ask me for my Joker’, Sehun whispers back, trying to be subtle as Chen looks over at him, taunting him with his eye contact.

‘No, he won’t. Just try it’

‘Chen, Ace of Spades’, he looks over the General, sitting tall and straight, eyes scanning his fingers. He drops another card. Sehun breathes out a relief as he picks up the ace, seeing Chen’s cards decreasing.

‘Queen of Hearts’, Chen reciprocates, only sighing in frustration as Sehun picks up another card from the deck.

 

 

 

 

‘Where is your self-raise button? One of your gravitational lifts is acting a bit dodgy’, Suho calls over at Baekhyun, looking over at the rear-view mirror to find a fault in one of Baekhyun’s Butterfly wings.

‘I don’t have any’

‘And why not?’

‘Because it’s a waste of space. I need more defence settings’

‘Defence setting? What are you going to defend when your ship is breaking apart?’, Suho grovels in frustration, opening the small drawers in the front steers of the ship, opening to see a bunch of junk, ‘What even is this?’, he groans in disgust as he lifts up some sort of wet plastic rubber.

‘Oh, you don’t want to touch that…’

‘Oh MAMA, gross’, he tosses it to the side, gagging as he wipes his hands on his trousers. He was about to close the draw but a small object caught his eyes. Flashing white, a glass ball is hidden beneath all the junk, crystal clear and absolutely no scratch or marks etched on the surface.

‘Is this… Is this a power orb?’, he whispers to Baekhyun, picking it up to see an ancient mark stamped on the middle of the ball as his skin touches it.

‘Give that to me’, Baekhyun snatches his power orb from Suho, throwing it back into the drawer and closing it. He grabs one of the billions of keys he kept inside his front pocket, knowing which keys is which, so he easily locked the drawer to keep Suho from touching it again.

‘Why do you have your powers materialised? Have you been attacked by the machine too?’

‘If I had, I wouldn’t have my powers with me’, Baekhyun whispers, glaring at Suho as he tries to force the latter to whisper, turning back to check if the rest of the group has heard their conversation.

‘Then why is it in that state’

‘Because I asked a sorcerer to’

‘What? Why?’

‘Suho, I’m a scavenger. You know the first thing people do when they meet a scavenger roaming around their planet?’

‘What?’

‘They fucking kill them. I’m not going to let them kill me and take my power. If I die, no one gets it’, Baekhyun presses the invisibility setting as his radar warns him of an incoming ship.

‘So… You hide it with your pile of junk?’

‘No one will think I’ll hide my power in a pile of junk, right?’

‘But still…’, Suho looks over the locked drawer, curious and drawn to the orb which hides inside. Surely Baekhyun had other reasons why he would agree on ripping his powers away from him.

‘Anyway, we’ve still got a long way to go till we reach EX’act’

‘What are you talking about? We’re practically here’, Suho lifts his glasses closer to his face as he takes a closer look at their radar, seeing the ship hovering just above the planet.

‘We need to park outside the black city, which is a couple of hundred miles from here’

‘And why is that?’

‘Because I’m not the most popular man on the planet…’, Baekhyun turns the ship aggressively to the left as he notices more ships hovering beside him, some he recognises and he’d rather avoid the owners who ride those ships.

‘What did you do?’, Suho questions, eyes looking up and down at the main pilot, curious but slightly scared of his answer.

‘I stole an eye’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Well, I didn’t steal it. The Captain was dead already, so…’

‘Wait… Please explain to me why you wanted the eye?’

‘Ever heard of the half alien, half machine Commander Soo Man of Section 76?’

‘You mean the late infamous Commander of the SM empire?’

‘Yeah, he died in EX’act Black City during the Civil War and I kind of…’

‘You were the one who stole his fucking laser eye?’

‘I mean, I was in the middle of the wasted battlefield after the war and they haven’t bothered to pick up the bodies and I saw his… I mean come on, that eye was expensive! Everyone wanted it!’

‘So, you carved it from his skull?!’

‘He’s dead. He didn’t feel it’

‘That’s not the point Baekhyun! You’ve disrespected their former commander! They needed to bury him in honour and you just tore his face off!’

‘Hey, he was dead already! What’s the harm of taking something he’s not going to need anymore!’

‘And you were going on about how you didn’t want anyone to take your powers…’, Suho mumbles, looking over the Black City to find that it’s not much different from EXOdus Black Market, it was just slightly bigger and more... Eccentric.

‘That’s a different story…’

‘I beg to differ’

 

 

 

 

The ship lands on the dusted wastelands which rested on the edge of the planet.

‘Blurgh. What are these particles? They don’t seem like any normal specks of dust’, Sehun coughs out, covering his nose with his leather gloved hands, trying not to breathe in the thick particles in a brown matter which flies around the area.

‘Reboot system activated. Engines in need of cleansing. Warning, system blocked with foreign particles’, Chanyeol spoke out in his monotonous robot voice, eyes quivering as he tries to block out the particles from going inside his system.

‘Drink this’, Baekhyun throws a flask of diesel to Chanyeol. The tall robot drank and sip and instantly refreshed his system, muscles spasm as his electric veins are final induced to some good fuel.

‘Damn, my visions improved to 20/20. I can feel my skin!’, Chanyeol screams out, looking down at the flask and drinking it in one shot.

‘Don’t waste it all. It’s not easy trying to get diesel this far from Planet Earth’, Baekhyun warns the robot as the group of eight aliens to make their way towards the loud city.

‘Diesel? You mean the fuel that’s only produced on Planet Earth?! You have diesel on you?’

‘Yeah, a tank filled’

‘May I examine it when we get back? I’ve been curious to learn the structure of the substance’, Xiumin asks Baekhyun, running up to him with eyes as big as Sehun’s guns, gleaming at the pilot with so many intriguing stuff, he just wants to bury himself in the scavenger unit.

‘Fine by me… If we get back…’

‘What?’

‘Nothing’, Baekhyun sighs, covering his eyes with sunglasses he found on Earth, trying to hide as much of his face as they near the entrance of the Black City.

EX’act is a city of pure eccentrics, that’s what sets it apart from EXOdus. Unlike the previous black market which is filled with drunk and violence, EX’act revels in its subtlety on hiding its shady business, building interiors which deceives a stranger as a normal shop but behind the walls? Well… there’s a reason why they rival EXOdus. Many people over the years have preferred the brilliance of EX’act Black City, with many high society aliens taking refuge to fill their selfish desires in the form of ‘high class’ gambling and brothels. To explain it clearer, EXOdus was at least truthful about its darkness, whereas EX’act hides between the mask of high society and golden spoons.

‘What a bunch of fakes’, Chen shakes his head in disgust, looking over to see Generals from different Army bases indulging themselves in such activities. They have broken the most obvious rule in their guidelines; not to step over the law.

‘Oh, my MAMA, this looks like heaven!’, Kai whispers, voice high pitched as he excitedly looks around the clean city, piles of beautiful aliens walking the streets with their perfectly fitted clothes flowing through the wind.

‘Kai, you stay with me. We’re here to look for RF_05, not to get an alien to bed’, Chen whispers to the Commander’s son, pulling Kai’s sleeves so he can stand next to him.

‘Oh, come on! We’re here already, we might as well have some fun’, he smirks over to an alien woman, blue skin and eyes dazzling with silver as she shyly waves back, webbed fingers gesturing Kai to come forward to her. D.O can only look at their exchange in absolute disgust.

‘Gross’, he whispers, but Kai heard it.

‘Oh, come on sweetie. Don’t say you wouldn’t want this either?’, Kai playfully pokes D.O’s stomach, pointing at all of him as he bends down to the boy’s level, licking his lips as he scans D.O’s body. The short boy wasn’t so bad looking himself.

‘You better stay away from me before I shoot you in the head’, D.O squirms uncomfortably at the gaze, pushing Ka away from him and clambering over to Xiumin, who looks like the only normal one in the group.

‘Guys, shut up. We need to get some information as fast as we can. We need to split up’, Suho begins to etch out a plan in his head, trying to learn the interiors of the city as quickly as possible as he looks over the group.

‘What a wonderful idea’, Kai call out, already trying to break away from the group as he watches a group of beautiful aliens walk pass him.

‘Keep it in your pants, will you?’, Chen smacks the back of Kai’s head, forcing him to return to the group.

‘I’m going to stick with Baekhyun. D.O and Sehun, go to the nearest bars and gamblers dine and try to ask around. Xiumin and Chanyeol, go to the mechanics, they might know a thing or two about the machines and Chen... babysit Kai for us’

‘What? That’s all I do? I’m a General goddammit’

‘And go to the brothels. There are probably other Generals around there’, Suho finalises his orders, fixing his specs as he claps his hand for the group to disperse.

‘Ah yes!’

‘I said keep it in your goddamn pants!’

‘And remember guys! I want everyone back here in two hours tops!’, Suho shouts over to the different pairs who have started to make their way after his orders.

‘You sure splitting up was a good idea?’, Baekhyun murmurs as he and Suho pass a crowd of SM Soldiers drinking away and stepping over to where the brothels are.

‘It’s going to fine’

‘Whatever you say, boss’

 

 

 

 

Chanyeol has been fairly silent Xiumin has noticed, walking like a normal alien, red eye flashing around the perimeter, checking the identity of each alien. Xiumin couldn’t be more than intrigued by such intricate piece of work. Artificial Intelligence is nothing new, but he’s never seen a half human cyborg. Human beings are too complicated species to experiment on, Xiumin couldn’t even begin to analyse their anatomy, so for someone to use one to make a cyborg, it fascinates the Rabbi.

‘So… Who was your maker?’, Xiumin asks as they further out of the central city, looking down on his EXOphone to direct him to the alley of mechanic shops which were more further down the field.

‘His name was LOEY. An engineer for the EXO’rdium’

‘LOEY? The old Commander of Science and Intelligence?’, Xiumin looks to stare at Chanyeol, intrigued even more. This means Chanyeol was made to serve the army, just like him. So why was he residing in EXOdus?

‘Yes. LOEY of sector 92, 245 years of age and have contributed to three thousand, four hundred and eighty-three projects and experiments for the EXO’rdium government. Highly intelligent and respected in the whole galaxy’, Chanyeol reads out the information of his maker which he pulled out from his data.

‘Why did LOEY make you? If you were part of an experiment, you wouldn’t be in EXOdus wasting away’

‘I’m wasting away?’, Chanyeol looks across to where the well-groomed Rabbi was, zooming his eyes to see the flashes of emotions on Xiumin’s face, how easily the man can show emotions, Chanyeol was almost envious.

‘No, I don’t mean that… Just… If you had a purpose, then why would he dump you in EXOdus?’

‘I am not sure’, Chanyeol looks at the Rabbi’s EXOphone, they’re close, he moves further, racing faster to the shop, leaving Xiumin and their conversation behind.

The mechanic shop was highly polished, everything piled in perfect precision and organisation, tall shelves of perfectly cut metal and parts shiny and newly decorated all over the shop, not a speck of dust rested.

‘Excuse me. May I ask some questions’, Xiumin walks over, tapping Chanyeol’s back to warn him not to talk yet, looking across to the front reception where a woman sat, green skin and eyes arches like Baekhyun’s wild car, lips full and fingers webbed.

‘What is it I may help you with?’, she asks, putting down the mirror she was holding up in front of her face, fingers resting around the handle of the perfect gold on the mirror.

‘I was wondering whether you know anything about an RF_05’, the mention of its name tenses the woman to her core, her fingers gripping much tighter to her mirror, her eyes squinting to take a closer look on the alien asking such a vile question.

‘And why do you ask?’

‘You must know about the attack on EXOdus market. None survived’, Xiumin lied, of course, they survive, but by the looks on her face, he couldn’t trust her subtle movements as her hands went below the desk, lips forming a downward smile. She has to know something. He slyly taps Chanyeol to walk further, to see what the alien was hiding behind her desk.

‘Yes. The whole galaxy is talking about it. What of it?’

‘It seems that the attacker is known as RF_05, also known as a machine made by the Red Force’

‘Such wonderful information you are giving me, but what is your question? What do you want?’

‘I want to know where it is?’

‘And why would I know?’

‘By the looks of your right-hand gripping on a laser, I’d conclude that you have a 56% chance of knowing some information about the Red Force’, Chanyeol blurts out as he wedges closer to where the reception is, seeing the woman’s webbed fingers holding a Killer64 laser gun.

Suddenly, the reception table flips over, landing on Xiumin as the alien starts to push past them, gun at her right hand, reaching out to shoot at Chanyeol who starts to chase after her.

‘Hey! Chanyeol no! Help me up first!’, Xiumin cries out, waving his arms out as his lower body is trapped below the heavy metal of the table pressing down against him. Much to his dismay, Chanyeol is already out of the door, turning his speed on as he chases after the alien.

 

 

 

 

Sehun and D.O, however, were on the other side of the city, where the many bars were set up all across the roads. Aliens of high class taunt in and out of the bars, dressed to the nines but faces looking like a minus ten.

‘This is worse that EXOdus’, Sehun murmurs as he sees fellow soldiers with the EXO logo etched on their uniforms.

‘I don’t think so. I think it smells way better than EXOdus’, D.O utters, looking around to see that EX’act had actual cleaners sweeping the streets and helping drunk Generals go from one place to the other, it seems much more organised and D.O preferred it than the lunatic mess that was his old home. Of course, both places were still illegal and shady, but he’d rather have a clean Black Market than a dirty one.

‘That’s not the point. The point is that the aliens who are supposed to be stopping bad stuff from happening are the ones doing it’, Sehun tuts as they walk into the biggest bar they saw, which was a building in a circular structure, like a French horn, walking in to find the likes of Government officials, soldier and Rabbis alike. What an embarrassment.

‘Why don’t we start with a Rabbi? That seems like a good idea, right?’, D.O whispers, looking over a group of Rabbis which sat around a table, empty bottles of alcohol disperse between them.

‘Seems great. You go’, Sehun orders, looking over to his left to find fellow soldiers sporting the same uniform as him.

‘Wait, what? I’m not going to do it?’

‘Why not? It’ll be practice once you get promoted to an EXO mechanic’

‘Mechanics don’t talk. That’s the beauty of it. They just fix stuff’

‘Yeah, whatever kid’, Sehun pats him on the back, eyeing the group of soldiers, feet already making their way over to them, leaving D.O all alone.

‘Kid? Hey! I’m probably older than you!’, he shouts at Sehun – more like his back. He looks across to where the drunk Rabbis are, taking a deep breath, in and out, slowly approaching them.

‘He-Hello?’, he stutters, coughing in between as he tries to garner attention from four aliens sporting a red Rabbi uniform.

‘What do you want?’, one slurs out, laughing as the other aliens laugh point at D.O, joking about his appearance.

_Breathe D.O. Breathe._

‘Um… I’m actually a big fan of yours and was wondering if I can ask you questions?’, he tells no one directly, as he tries to gain one of their attention – well lucky for him, he gains all of their attention. All four Rabbis finally lift their drunk heads, smiling down towards him as they gesture him to sit down with them.

‘Well, why didn’t you say so? Have a seat! Have a seat young man! Ask us anything!’

‘But first! Let’s take another drink! Someone give this young man a drink!’

‘Oh, I don’t think’

Before he can deny, he was already thrust with a glass full of beer.

***

‘Hello’, Sehun who was in the other side of the bar smiles and sits down right next to the soldiers, ‘Nice to finally have a break’, he sighs, stealing a glass half filled with alcohol and taking it in one shot. The bitter taste runs straight down his throat, making him gag for a moment as it burns through.

‘Right…’, they all observe the young soldier who was in the middle of a coughing fit, hand fisted and punching his chest as he tries to get it together.

‘Anyway…’, Sehun finally manages to whisper out, throat still clenched over the burning sensation, ‘What have you guys been up to?’

‘Do we know you?’, one of the soldier, bright orange hair, looks over at Sehun, eyes suspiciously looking over the young soldier.

‘Um… No, but we’re from the same base. See,’ Sehun pulls his uniform to show his logo, ‘I just wanted to see how you’re all doing’

‘Fine’, they try to dismiss the odd behaving soldier, turning their back on him.

‘Anyway, guys. Have you heard of the attack on EXOdus? Such hard work trying to clean that place up’

‘You’ve been to EXOdus?’

‘Well yeah. I was assigned for clean-up duty. The whole place is a mess!’

This catches the soldiers’ attention.

‘Why don’t you have another drink and tell us about it’

‘My pleasure’

***

After less than an hour, both Sehun and D.O are smashed drunk. The Rabbis’ have taken advantage of the young man’s inexperience with alcohol, giving him glass after glass of strong alcohol.

‘So, kid. What was your question again?’, one call over, splashing over alcohol as he tries to pour another to D.O’s drink.

‘Well, actually, I’m supposed to ask about the Red Force but what I’m really curious about is…’ D.O stutters, gulping his drink as he hiccups with the amount of substance he's drunk.

‘What are you curious about?’

‘Why does your skin light up?’, D.O points at the Rabbi’s skin, noticing that the skin s glowing yellow the more they intake alcohol, it’s really bugging him why it does that.

***

‘Morning comes! And we’ll be history!’, Sehun sings along with the other soldiers as they make their way to the back of the bar, where a Karaoke booth is placed, with neon light shining across the room.

‘Come on, let’s go!’

 

 

 

 

 

‘I still don’t think it’s a good idea to be splitting up’, Baekhyun whispers, eyes still buried behind his hat, the rest of his face covered in a mask he stole from Planet Earth. He really shouldn’t be here.

‘Don’t be stupid. We have three well-trained aliens. They know how to handle themselves’

‘That’s not the problem’

‘Then what is?’

‘That is’, Baekhyun points his fingers onto the central field where a group of Commanding Officials march towards one of the casinos, ‘General Chen is not the type to be running around brothels and casinos, so the moment they see him, they’ll know what’s going on’

‘And what’s the problem? It’s not like we’re here to arrest them’

‘That’s not what they think’

‘They’re not going to kill the second in command’, Suho looks over beside him to where Baekhyun stand, arms crossed and face fully covered.

‘You have too much trust in them’

‘And you don’t?’

‘Would I be here if I did?’

‘You’re such a cynic’, Suho whispers, lifting his gun to rest it on his shoulder, other hand gliding his glasses up as they walk around the centre of the city, eyes glazing over anyone who looked like they might know a thing or two about the red force, but that’s the thing, they didn’t know anyone that might look like they know anything about the Red Force.

‘Look at the all, they don’t even act remotely surprised over what happened in EXOdus’, Baekhyun judges the movements of the aliens, all smiles and laughter with no remorse over the recent tragedy. The place looks even more bright as they celebrate the death of the wasteland which was EXOdus.

‘It’s not the time to judge. Now let’s go, we need to see if there’s a remote possibility that RF_05 could be landing here next’, Suho grabs Baekhyun’s sleeves, guiding the pair into the vernacular scene of loud noises and dancing.

 

 

 

 

‘Hey babe, wanna dance?’, Kai smirks as he strolls inside one of the brothels, impressed by its high class and stature, aliens dressed to the nines and the ladies – he didn’t even want to get started.

‘Kai, stay with me, you’re not doing anything apart from talking’, Chen warns him, poker-faced and hands rested on his gun as he scans the perimeter, taking notes of the different escape route, they can go if anything else happens.

_Exit door to the left._

_Front door._

_Backdoor which leads to the storage trucks._

_Second-floor windows._

‘You need to relax’, Kai whispers, stroking an alien’s tunic as they pass, giving him a wink.

‘Relax? Kai, we are here to find information about the Red Force, not strolling around having sex’

‘And you should look like you’re coming here to have sex if you don’t want to look suspicious’, Kai warns him, approaching a young alien with the same mammalian structure as his, hair swaying pass his waist and a drink of whisky in his hands.

_Bingo._

Kai makes a move.

‘Kai, come back here now’, Chen whispers through gritted teeth as Kai breaks from his hols, already having his eyes on a target. Chen is left hanging in the centre of the brothel, smiling awkwardly as different types of aliens throw themselves onto him, hands prying his uniform and eyes hungrily staring at him.

‘Hey, you’re an Official Mechanic, right?’, Kai approaches the alien, arms leaning on the bar stand as he grabs the boy’s glass, sipping the drink before licking his lips, eyes gazing down at him in a seductress manner.

‘Um… Yeah, that’s right’, the stranger coughs awkwardly, looking to see a name tag on Kai’s uniform, only to see it ripped off, ‘And um… What’s your name?’, he asks, pointing at the mysterious tear on Kai’s uniform. Of course, Kai knew not to flounder around with his name stuck to him and thank God, he had the logic to take it off as he saw a bunch of soldiers from his father’s army base make way inside. He turns himself around so that his back is facing them, hands slowly grabbing the boy’s arms as he draws him closer.

‘Wouldn’t you like to know’, he whispers, his breath touching the Mechanic’s skin, lips brushing past his ears as he slowly guides him to an empty room.

 

 

 

 

Xiumin finally eases out of the table, following in pursuit as he runs out of the shop, turning his head to see where Chanyeol and that alien went.

This won’t do.

Xiumin flings himself onto the building wall, gripping between the cracks of the bricks as he climbs atop the shop, landing straight into the rooftop. He looks around the structure of the roads, trying to see a tall boy running. He sees men and women strolling across, cleaners sweeping the floors.

Hold on. There he is. He catches Chanyeol on the fork of the road connecting its way towards the brothels, seeing the cyborgs fast legs chasing after the alien who turns back to shoot at him. Xiumin grabs hold of his belt, holding onto his antigravitational gun before making a jump from the roof, pulling away gravity to jump closer to the alien.

***

Thanks to Baekhyun’s diesel, Chanyeol never felt more alive, racing along the crooks of the roads, arms pushing pass the different stalls and people which blocks his way from the lady in front. His eyes zoom in front to get a closer look at the alien’s fingerprints.

 

**_Yuri_ **

_-mechanic shop owner_

_-martial arts graduate_

_-once a training soldier in the SM Empire_

_-testing DNA results… 87% match to late Commander Soo Man of the SM Empire_

 

Shit. She’s the daughter of the former commander. She truly must know about something. He crashes onto a stall of apples, distracted by his sudden revelation.

‘Hey watch it!’, Chanyeol ignores the angry market man, standing straight to his feet, looking pass the wreck objects on the floor to see her figure slowly fading into view. He makes a run for it.

Yuri, on the other hand, turns back to see the alien behind her being blocked, smiling as she ran further into the city, gun still in her hand, making a left turn towards a dead alleyway. She gasps for breathing, hand resting on the cold wall as she bends down to take a breather, hair flowing past her face. She stands up to recharge her gun, only to be pushed violently on the brick walls, a gun pressed to her throat.

‘Tell me about the Red Force and I’ll let you go’, Xiumin threatens, fingers trudging on the trigger of his fully charge laser gun.

‘What do you want from me?’, Yuri demands, spitting on Xiumin’s face as he tries to push the alien away, using as much strength left in her to try and get away.

‘I don’t want anything from you! Just information!’

‘Well, I ain’t giving any!’

‘Tough luck then’, Xiumin replies, pressing the gun straight in front of her face, fingers slowly pulling the trigger.

‘Wait! Xiumin stop! She’s the daughter!’, Chanyeol shouts from the end of the alleyway, breathing terminated as he now used his plugging system to garner air in his body.

‘What?’

‘She’s Yuri, Commander Soo Man’s last living daughter’, Chanyeol walks over to them, forcing Xiumin to let go of her, ‘She thinks we’re the Red Force’, he turns to face her, ‘Look, young lady,, we’re not the Red Force and we’re not here to kidnap you. We just need information’

‘About what?’, she breathes out, staring at the two aliens, one sporting an EXO’rdiumin uniform. She can’t trust officials and this guy is one of them.

‘The Red Force attacked EXO’dus last night. We need to know where the machine went, where it’s going and how to stop it’

‘Why?’

‘Because we’re the only survivors of the attack and we’ve seen what it can do. We need to stop it before it starts another attack deeper into the city’

‘Only survivors? There were no survivors during last night’s attacks, official reports showed no signs of living bodies found in the wreckage’

‘Look, Yuri, even if you don’t believe we’re survivors, we’re also not the Red Force’, Chanyeol breaks the tension which builds between the three of them, glares upon each other and fist clenched in defence, ready to fight the stranger who fumes a sense of untrustworthiness.

‘I’m not saying anything. Not to an EXO’rdium official’, she grits her teeth, flashing cold stares over Xiumin who stands with posture in front of her – still prideful that he works for the government.

‘Then tell me’

 

 

 

 

‘Suho, listen, we need to leave. We’ve got nothing here’, Baekhyun groans for the umpteenth time, blocking his masked face as a group of EXO’rdium officials strolls pass them, getting more tensed as he fails to avoid some who he recognises and won’t be too pleased if they recognise him.

‘Baekhyun please stop being paranoid, we still have a couple of minutes before we meet everyone again, it’s going to be fine’, Suho breathes a sigh of frustration as the pair has been asking around for information but to no avail. No one wants to even discuss the Red Force.

‘We need to get back to the centre now’, Baekhyun grabs Suho’s arms the moment he saw someone who he really needs to avoid. Picking up the speed, Baekhyun turns left and back to the busy centre of EX’act, pursing his lips tight as he tries to ignore the suspicious looks from other aliens looking over two rushing aliens, ‘Now, where are the rest of them?’, he spins around, trying to find familiar figures who passes them.

‘I’m sure they’ll be here any minute’, Suho breathes out, resting his hands on his waist as he scans their surroundings, looking for anyone that may look like they know a thing about the Red Force – he squints his eyes to get a closer look on an alien in the far right, hands chugging down various types of alcohol and laughing along with his peers. Suho gleams at the man – more on his machine – which rested idly on the straps on his belt, an intercom the size of his hand, he’s been looking for that type of device for years. He wonders where the alien got it from. It’s a rare piece of item that costs at least three livers in the black market, ‘ One-second Baekhyun, I need to do something real quick’, before Baekhyun can protest and pin Suho back to his side, the man was already way over.

‘I hate this…’, Baekhyun whispers to himself, frustratingly scratching the back of his head as he elicits trials of curses and insults over his current predicament. All because he stayed behind EXO’dus, ‘What am I even complaining about? It’s my fault. That’s right Baekhyun, it’s your bloody fault…’, but before he can tell himself off any further, he sees running. Not just any running, but two aliens being chased after a whole group of soldiers, and one of those aliens in half naked – and is none other than Kai.

‘Run!’, Kai screams to Baekhyun the moment he sees the short pilot idly standing by the centre of the city, eyes falling on the mess behind them.

‘I can’t believe this! I’m your second in command!’, Chen screams behind him as he looks behind to find that the soldiers were still chasing after them, laser guns in their hands and waiting for it to load. Unbelievable, Chen couldn’t believe that a bunch of highly trained soldiers were now ready to shoot Commander Kim’s co-commander. This place is definitely worse than EXO’dus.

‘Chen stop it and just leg it!’, Kai screams, grabbing Chen’s arms and racing further towards Baekhyun who has also started to make a run for it. Kai had never been this tired in his life. Damn, he misses his powers so much right now.

‘What in two moons is going on?!’, Baekhyun yells over to them as they start to flee the centre, eyes flashing back a sudden as he realises that they’ve left Suho behind. Baekhyun makes a stop, looking behind to evaluate if he has time to go back to get Suho, but the man is still having somewhat of a deep conversation with another alien and the racing soldiers are well behind them. Oh well, he’ll make it on the ship on his own.

‘Chen didn’t know how to ask a question!’, Kai blames his commanding officer, turning a corner as they retreat from the city.

‘Excuse me, they’re the ones who don’t know how to behave! All I did was ask them about the Red Force!’, Chen screams whilst running, breathless and completely angry, Chen’s voice turns a sudden tone, higher than his usual.

‘You pointed your gun at them and told them if you don’t tell them about the Red Force, you were going to suspend them!’, Kai argues back, trying to lift his shirt over his head as he jumps to avoid the barrels and boxes resting by the stalls of the side market.

‘I was just doing my job!’

‘You were interrogating them like prisoners!’

They turn another corner, finally outrunning the group of soldiers, breathing heavily, hands resting on the walls as they try to regain some strength.

‘Shut up, both of you. They might hear us’, Baekhyun peeks from the cracks of the wall, trying to see if any remaining soldiers roaming around the area, ‘Right, that’s it. We’re going back to my ship. Chen, get everyone’s coordinates. We’re getting out of here’.

 

 

 

 

Sehun and D.O are wasted, to say the least. Both alien have been abandoned by their party as they day breaks to an end, the Rabbis and soldiers in need to go back to their bases before they get in trouble, which means Sehun and D.O are still in the bar, all alone with piles of empty bottles surrounding them.

‘Excuse me, sirs, but I’m going to need the both of you to leave’, one of the bartenders call over, poking Sehun’s shoulder as the boy snores loudly, head resting on the cold and unsanitary table, D.O’s head resting on his broad back and dribbling on his uniform, ‘Sirs’, the bartender pokes the soldier again, this time strengthening the tone of his voice.

‘Hmphf…’, Sehun groans, lifting his heavy eyelids open, his surroundings out of control as his head spins around, making him want to hurl, ‘Where am I?’, he moans his pain as he feels a surge of pain after lifting his head suddenly.

‘You’re at a bar sir and if you’re not going to buy any more drinks, then please exit’, Sehun slowly lifts himself up, feeling a heavy drop from his back as D.O drops to the floor, ‘Who’s that?’, he murmurs, laughing as he sees D.O struggling to stand to his feet, stumbling all over the place as his eyes tight shut, trying to control his mind to stay still.

‘Se- Sehooooooon. Where are we?’, D.O groans, giggling for a moment as he sees Sehun to find odd markings all over the boy, one that said space geek written across his forehead.

‘Who are you? Answer your superior’, Sehun imitates his leader, imitating a deep voice with his fingers imitating what seems to be a shape of a gun, ‘bang bang pow’.

‘MAMA almighty. I told you not to split. Look at this’, Baekhyun walks into the bar, leaving Kai and Chen in his ship which hovers above the bar, walking in to see the mess that is Sehun and D.O.

‘Oh. It’s our pilot! Our pilot!’, Sehun screams, stumbling over to wrap an arm around Baekhyun, giggling and too close to the man.

‘Get off me. D.O come here. We’re leaving’, he grabs both of their arms, shaking his head from side to side in utter disappointment and a big huge _I told you so_ look plastered on his face. Suho is so going to get it.

‘I’m sorry, but who are you?’, D.O giggles, poking the small accessory hanging from the man’s ears, laughing as it swayed from side to side whenever he pokes it.

‘Chen. Bring her down’, Baekhyun speaks over the intercom, waiting for his ship to come down and avoiding to even ask Sehun how they even got to this state.

 

 

 

 

‘You know, I really had something going before you caused this whole mess’, Kai complains, sitting in the co-pilot seat as he hears Chen following Baekhyun’s orders.

‘Yeah. You were sleeping around’, Chen huffs in frustration, oozing out sarcasm as he lands the ship, feeling the touch of the ground.

‘Come on. Pops always say to attack them when they’re vulnerable. Can’t get any more vulnerable when you’re naked…’

Chen didn’t even bother to reply to Kai, switching the unlock button on the doors, looking back to see Baekhyun being compressed between two very drunk aliens.

‘What is going on?’, Chen asks, seeing both Sehun and D.O hit the floor, unconscious and already snoring.

‘They’re drunk’

‘Oh great. This cannot get any worse’, Chen complains, banging the headboard of the ship as he gets up, stomping towards one of the room to the left of Baekhyun’s spaceship, in need of some time alone to at least stay sane. But his journey is cut short when they feel the shaking of the ship, violent outbursts which causes the objects in the ship to tumble and fall.

‘What was that?’, Baekhyun asks, turning his head towards the window of his ship, ‘Holy shit’

And there it is. Dozens of aircraft dropping some sort of device on the ground.

‘It’s a bomb!’, Kai yells, pulling over the headphones interlocking two pilots in close contact with each other, turning on the co-pilot wheels and gesturing for Baekhyun to hurry the hell up and get in. Baekhyun needed no more than a second to join Kai, sitting in the dominant seat and pressing all his defence button, bringing his headphones to him.

‘Chen, get me the rest of the coordinates now!’, Baekhyun orders, starting his ship in full gear, invisibility shield on – guns at the ready.

 

 

 

 

‘The Red Force is coming. And no one can stop it’, Yuri whispers, Xiumin walking lightly behind them, rolling his eyes as Yuri still refuses to trust him. Not to worry, Xiumin recently invented a device which allows his hearing to be exemplified so he can hear their conversation loud and clear – he didn’t trust Chanyeol’s ability to store all the information in his malfunctioning brain.

‘My father used to work in the secret force that was set up to fight the Red Force. All they know now is that the Red Force is planning to regress as many aliens in EXO planet now. But we don’t know how they’ll do it or how long they’ll do it for’

‘Do you happen to know about the machines being built?’

‘No, nothing. But my dad had been predicting when they’ll next attack will be and if they attack right now, it means he’s right’

‘Excuse me?’

‘My dad has predicted that EXO’dus will most likely be its first attack and after that Ex’act. It means the machine is going to be right here’

Xiumin pauses in his tracks, eyes widening as he looks ahead to the pair. The next target is EX’act? That can’t be right, there are no correlations between the two that the Red Force will attack them side by side. Unless…

 

 

 

 

A loud bang bursts through the atmosphere smokes red and purple firing the city.

‘They’re here’, Yuri whispers, turning back to look at the explosion, shaped like a fiery red sun, Yuri turns to Chanyeol, ‘You need to leave now’

Xiumin runs up to them, turning Yuri to him as he makes a run for the centre, where he prays Suho and the rest of them are.

‘Chanyeol, come on, let’s go’, he calls after Chanyeol to follow him, running straight into the fire with no second thought. He’s going to get his power back and he’ll be damned if he doesn’t.

 

 

 

 

****


	4. 내가 미쳐

#  내가 미쳐

 

**_playlist four:[going crazy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2XTOu8xkgk)_ **

 

* * *

 

The aircraft was flying by the dozens, dropping bombs which emits explosion all over the city, destroying buildings and killing hundreds of more lives – more than last night – Xiumin has presumed since the density of EX’act was much stronger than EXO’dus and far more important. There are Generals, Soldiers and highly influential people residing in the black city, which means by the time the attack ends, it will be a huge blow to EXO’rdium.

‘Chanyeol, Yuri, get your guns ready. We need to gear up and capture one of the pilots’, Xiumin looks overboard, eyes resting on the red sun drawn on each aircraft. If they take one ship down, they might get one pilot hostage and that’ll be more than enough.

‘We can’t capture a pilot’, Chanyeol breaks Xiumin’s hopes, red eyes zooming onto the windows of one of the hovering aircraft, sensing not one breathing alien inside. He turns his ray vision on, looking pass the dark tinted windows to find not a pilot, not even a living this, ‘The aircraft is a machine. No one is flying it’, Yuri and Xiumin turn to him, both confused as they look in the direction that Chanyeol was looking at. It seems to them that someone has to be flying the aircraft. It’s a ship that needs to be controlled.

‘Chanyeol, what are you talking about. It’s an aircraft and it needs a pilot’

‘No, it doesn’t. It’s a Red Force machine that knows how to fly…’, Chanyeol makes a move on, grabbing the handles of a fire escape on one of the buildings, ‘But that doesn’t mean we can’t make use of it’, Xiumin and Yuri look up to see the cyborg climbing up on the stairs, making his way to the rooftop.

‘Where is he going?’, Yuri whispers, turning to look at the Rabbi.

‘I have no idea, but let’s go’, Xiumin urges Yuri to follow him, hands automatically wrapping itself around hers as he guides her over the stairs, ‘Careful’

‘I can take care of myself’, Yuri abruptly let’s go of his hands, clambering over to the stairs and after Chanyeol who is now on top of the roof, gazing over what seems to become more of a familiar sight to him.

‘With every machine comes data of its origin. We take it down, I might be able to wire myself in to see if they have the coordinates of their next target or at least some information about where it was built’, Chanyeol voices over his plan to the two who has just recently joined him.

‘That doesn’t seem like a bad idea’, Yuri calls over, charging her laser gun as she looks across to see the city burning to the ground in front of her – no defence from the government in a sigh – how typical. Xiumin scans the general map of the city from his view, mind scanning the weakness of the city and the strengths of the aircraft, detangling a plan which might have a chance of working.

‘Chanyeol, you see the hill down there?’, Xiumin points to the high tops of the city, ‘We have a closer shot at hitting an aircraft if we’re over there. If me and Yuri attack from there, I’m going to need you to base yourself over there were the Lee Soo Man memorial statue is’, he points over the fifty-foot-tall bronze statue of the late Captain, ‘You need to be on top of that statue and emit high static to block the signals of the aircrafts’

‘I’m afraid I don’t have the high statics you are talking about’, Chanyeol turns to Xiumin, scanning his settings at the same time, looking for some sort of feature he hasn’t encountered before.

‘You’re a LOEY product. It’s definitely in you. Listen to me, your maker always inserts a static blocker inside his inventions so that his products can work more efficiently, I need you to find that chip in you and turn it off. Once it’s off, you’ll have the ability to collect the static and emit it out. That way, if the aircraft are machine generated, they’ll be paralysed. That’s enough time for me and Yuri to capture one. You got that?’, Xiumin explains to Chanyeol one more time, seeing the cyborg hesitantly nod before making his way to guide Yuri out.

‘Let’s go’

‘What makes you think I’m going to help you?’, Yuri stops all of a sudden, folding her arms and squinting her eyes to focus on the Rabbi with a gun.

‘You’re charging your laser gun’, Xiumin points, gesturing her to follow him but the moment he turns around to see Yuri stamped to her spot, he sighs, ‘Miss Yuri, you’re here to try and stop the Red Force yourself, that’s why you’re here in EX’act despite knowing that it’s next on the list. If you were planning to try and defeat _that_ by yourself, then why not with a team?’

Yuri stills for a moment, eyes still filled with anger over a government official, but hands twitching beside her gun.

‘Fine. Let’s go’

 

 

‘I’m going to need eyes behind the ship’, Baekhyun orders, seeing Chen running to the back, two machine guns with him as he opens the windows of the ship, scanning for any aircraft which might sense their presence.

‘It’s the Red Force’, Kai whispers, looking out to see the Red Sun pasted on every aircraft.

‘No shit Kai. Look, we need to get Suho first. He’s the nearest and hopefully he’s still alive’, Baekhyun informs Kai as he makes a turn to the centre – or what once was the centre. It is now a pile of rubble, bodies spurt everywhere.

‘Where is he?’, Chen shouts across the ship, eyes scanning the window, gun at hand, shooting down an aircraft that started to near them.

‘Wait… I see him!’, Kai voices out, pointing at the only moving thing on the ground, a man amongst the dead body, running for his life as he shoots his laser above the sky, hitting the target of an aircraft machine gun perfectly.

‘Lower us down!’, Chen screeches as he sees a dozen more aircraft flying over their way. Chen doubles checks if their invisibility shield went bust but found that the ship was still camouflage. How did the aircraft know where they are?

Upon command, both Baekhyun and Kai stir the ship down, landing straight in the middle of the centre city, both Sehun and D.O rolling around the floor, unconscious and unaware of what’s happening right now. Just when Chen needed a second pair of hands did Sehun have to get wasted; such a rookie soldier.

‘Someone get Suho. Now!’, Baekhyun orders, looking behind to see only Chen being present, sighing as he has to send the back up to go down and fetch the former captain.

‘I’ll be a minute, Kai takes over’, Chen orders the younger alien, opening the back door of the spaceship, leaving behind his gun, a small laser gun resting on his belt as he runs across the massacred field. Within moments when Chen opened the door, something happened, some sort of force which signalled every aircraft to change their direction, flying to where Baekhyun’s spaceship was, exactly where it was as if they have the coordinates saved in their system.

‘What the fuck?’, Baekhyun murmurs, looking up to see hundreds of aircraft flying around, hovering above them, ‘Kai… Close the door!’, and with that, Kai tightly sealed the back door of the spaceship and the aircraft begins to fly around in different directions, attacking the whole city.

_What is going on?_

‘They were about to attack us. Baekhyun, did you see that?!’, Kai looks out, gun at hand as he scans their surroundings, waiting for the Commander and former Captain to get their ass back in here.

Baekhyun puts the two and two together. There is no correlation in which the Red Force is attacking, no correlation but one. He turns his eyes to gaze at the Commander’s son.

The Red Force wants Kai.

That must be the reason. Why would they attack a wasted Black Market? The Red Force wouldn’t waste their ammo on such a lowly place, they’d aim higher, they always aim higher. They’ve destroyed actual planets before…

Baekhyun didn’t know what to do with this information. He turns back and looks at his space gear, eyes landing on the self-detached button. Kai was in the back of the ship… Baekhyun can detach Kai right here, right now, if the Red Force takes him, maybe this will end? He grazes his finger over the button, contemplating whether to push it or not.

‘Chen’s back!’, Kai shouts, unsealing the door and letting it wide open again, Chen holding onto Suho as they stumbled inside the ship. Baekhyun notices the aircrafts beginning to turn in their direction, stopping again once Kai shuts the ship.

 

 

Yuri and Xiumin raise on top of the hill, eyes viewing the once beautiful city in as a pile of rubble and smokes. Xiumin felt a surge of déjà vu as he scans the tumbling building and screams of pain.

‘Come on Chanyeol’, he whispers, gazes turning to the memorial statue, seeing a small figure climbing its way on top.

‘This is crazy. We’re high on the target’, Yuri calls over, looking around to see that they had no protection whatsoever, not even a tree or a piece of metal.

‘We’re going to be fine’

‘You don’t know that’

‘You’re right. I don’t. But there’s no point freaking out now’

Whilst the two aliens wait for the signal, Chanyeol struggles to find his static blocker. He had a feeling his maker didn’t build one for him, that’s probably why he was thrown out into EXO’dus because he rejected the static blocker and became a useless piece of machine. If that’s the case, then this plan is a lost cause.

‘Come on, Chanyeol’, he whispers to himself, finally getting up to the top of Lee Soo Man’s head, eyes closing as he internally scans his files, seeing no static blocker.

What is he going to do now? He can’t emit static without his static blocker – and since he doesn’t have one, there’s no way he can paralyse the aircraft…

Unless.

He creates one himself.

He’s never done it before. But he’s seen other machines doing it, riling up as much energy inside them and emitting loud static which breaks the waves of transmission. He can do it. He reaches behind his back pocket, opening the flask of diesel Baekhyun gave to him, gulping the rest and waiting for the fuel to rile him up. He closes his eyes shut, fist clenched tightly as he begins to pile up all the energy inside him, feeling more alive now that diesel was running through his veins.

‘One…’, he whispers out, feeling the electrons inside him riling up.

‘Two…’

…

 

 

‘What was that?’, Kai screams, scanning his controls, the beep running red along with the alarm on the spaceship blaring.

‘Make it stop. Someone make it stop!’, Baekhyun commands, pressing all his controls, looking at the front, his eyes levitating from the sky, worrying over the alarming rate in which his invisible shield is pulsating, ‘We need to make that stop, otherwise, those shits might see us!’, Baekhyun orders, turning around to see the rest of them sprawled on the floor, Chen just back inside along with Suho, laser gun ran out and useless.

‘What the hell is going on?’, Suho screams the moment the doors are locked, Baekhyun processing to use as much fuel as he can for their invisibility shield, locking down their boot system, just in case the aircraft below detect them.

‘Turn all forces down’

‘What do you mean? We need to shoot that thing down!’, Chen blares the moment Baekhyun retracts the machine guns, rejecting all guns, only the laser guns from Chen’s belt the only thing available, ‘Dude, we need the guns!’

‘No, we don’t! As long as they don’t see us, we’re fine!’

 

 

‘Is that the static?’, Yuri shouts the moment they hear it, the loud blaring incontrollable noise which itches their ears, vibrating the ground, every debris and dirt lifted off the ground.

‘Yepp. That’s the signal! Come on let’s go!’, Xiumin gestures forward, stretching his gun and aiming at the sky, ‘There’s one right on top of us!’

‘Alright, I’ve got eyes on the target’

‘Good… Now on the count of three’, Xiumin marks, steadying his arms, ‘One… Two…’

‘Three!’, the loud command startles Xiumin for a moment, his eyes diverting on Yuri, her green skin pressed against the laser gun, red beams lighting up at the aircraft right in front of them. Xiumin got back on the target the moment the aircraft corrupt, looking up to find the machine landing abruptly on the ground before them, fire emitting from the sides.

‘We’re supposed to keep it alive!’, Xiumin shouts, running down the hill as he hovers over the fallen aircraft, scanning to see if there’s any way for Chanyeol to get inside without burning alive, ‘Look! You can’t even get in! How are we supposed to-’, before Xiumin can finish his sentence, a loud blaring noise above them broke out, it seems as though another aircraft has just been hit, but Xiumin could not assume what. It seems as though it had crashed in mid-air, falling straight onto the ground with no perception of a hit except a bump by its side from where it has been hit.

‘What the hell was that?’, Yuri shouts, looking across to find a much more intact crashed aircraft right next to the blazing one which she fired at.

‘I have no idea, but it gave us a usable aircraft’, Xiumin points out, looking out to see Chanyeol making his way down the statue, static gone and aircrafts with full signal, recovering from their frozen boot system, ‘Right, we just need to keep this bad boy safe’, Xiumin informs, his laser gun pointing ahead of him, his eyes glazing down at the aircraft, doors wide open and steaming smoke up. Sure enough, there was no pilot inside, just a bunch of wires and blinking lights along with databases and systems crashed but not dead, ‘Chanyeol’s going to have the time of his life with this’.

‘I’m sure he is’, Yuri adds on, her locks flowing sweetly behind her, her band long gone and ripped from the run, her gun reloading, fingers resting on it patiently, her eyes and ears open for any more aircrafts, scanning to see a familiar sight of burnt buildings, painful screams and ships crash landing back on the planet, blood stains against the walls and debris piling up, her father’s statue crumbling down after an aircraft starts shooting at it.

‘Sorry’, Xiumin breaks the silence, ‘About your father. I heard he was a great man’

‘A gambler and a drinker’, Yuri adds on, chuckling once she notices Xiumin looking down awkwardly, hands resting on the rim of the open entrance of the aircraft in front of them, waiting for Chanyeol to show up, ‘But yeah, he was a good man’, she finishes her sentence, her eyes glancing back at the statue, the legs still erect but the upper half nothing more than crumbled rocks on the ground of an attack.

‘I am present’, they hear Chanyeol’s voice, breathless and monotonous from beyond, the cyborg probably running out of energy due to the explosive static. Xiumin can see the glitches in his eyes, the buffering movement of his hands as he stood beside them, breathless and tired.

‘Sorry mate, I know you’re tired, but you need to get yourself wired up here before another aircraft blow us up’, Xiumin orders, pushing Chanyeol to the aircraft, his feet leaning on the edge of it, hands reaching out to scan where the main database it, seeing a blinking circular computer in motion, spinning around frantically as it tries to detach itself out of the main system, ‘Jackpot’, Xiumin calls out, grabbing the red wire from it, pulling it out and reaching it behind Chanyeol’s neck, opening up the cyborg’s main database with hope that the Red Force hasn’t put some kind of parasitical bug that kills anything that tries to access their system, ‘Chanyeol, if you spot something funky, you need to tell me, okay?’

‘Got it’

‘You think the Red Force is dumb enough to leave trails in there?’, Yuri asks, looking up and aiming for another aircraft hovering near them, protecting their perimeter before going back to their side.

‘Not dumb. Maybe desperate’, Xiumin points out, watching the cyborg intently as he sees Chanyeol’s cheeks twitch, eyes zooming in and out frantically along with the odd noises of wires erupting.

‘Chanyeol… Chanyeol, you okay buddy?’, Xiumin asks, running his fingers along his arm to find that it’s burning hot, almost as if he was being set on fire on the inside, ‘Chanyeol? Chanyeol?!’, he feels the temperature rising, seeing red on the cyborg’s skin, ‘Chanyeol!’

‘I killed it’, Chanyeol replies, closing his eyes and reaching his hand out to hold onto the bars of the aircraft, breathing in and out.

‘Killed what?’

‘The bug’

‘You… Killed the parasitical bug?’, Xiumin asks, eyes wide open as he checks up on Chanyeol, reaching to touch his skin that was back to normal temperature, ‘You… How?’, Xiumin couldn’t believe that a cyborg who had just wasted most, if not, all of his energy emitting out a static combustion can still be able to kill a bug that even the most talented hacker and codebreakers can’t fathom to tackle. If it was any other day, Xiumin would be begging to take him to his office in the EXO’rdium centre to research everything about him, but they were in a situation where an aircraft is shooting right above them, so Xiumin had no choice but to leave Chanyeol searching, climbing up the burning aircraft, shooting his laser gun upwards, setting the aircraft on fire almost instantly.

‘Aren’t these things a little too easy to kill?’, Yuri comments, seeing another aircraft come crumbling down to the ground.

‘They’re not made to be indestructible’, Xiumin comments, observing the aircraft once Yuri made the statement, and sure enough, the aircraft were exploding by the second, ‘They’re easy to self-destruct’

‘What?’

‘Whatever is inside them, the Red Force really doesn’t want anyone to know. So, if one gets hit, it explodes to pieces before anyone can look for anything’, Xiumin explains, looking back to where Chanyeol was, his eyes closed as he tries to collect as much data as possible, ‘But I have no idea why that one is still intact’

‘Wait… If Chanyeol really did kill that bug inside… Wouldn’t the database notice?’, Yuri asks, turning back to the aircraft, ‘Wouldn’t it sense that someone has got in?’, they made eye contact with each other, eyes looking back at Chanyeol, legs sprinting to his side without anymore explanation, Yuri cutting the wires almost instantly as Xiumin turns to grab Chanyeol, running for their lives as far away from the aircraft, feeling a gush of energy pushing them off their feet, landing harshly on the floor almost ten feet away from where they were, turning back to see their aircraft in flames, explodes into pieces.

‘Shit… We could’ve died’, Yuri whispers, looking at her arm to see burn marks, scratches of glass which bled her skin.

‘Let’s just hope Chanyeol got something’, before Xiumin can ask the cyborg anything, the winds above them blew harshly, every pebble and scrap metals and rocks swirled around them, looking up, they see a familiar spaceship, ‘Took them long enough’, Xiumin whines, but a smile makes its way to his face, the invisibility shield slowly disappearing, its side gates opening to find Chen reaching his hand out, shouting for them to get in, ‘Yuri, come on, get in’, Xiumin orders, standing up with Chanyeol by his side, the boy fully unconscious now, gesturing his hand for the other to follow him.

‘You go’, Yuri urges them, standing up to wipe the blood off her skin.

‘What? Are you staying behind? Are you crazy?!’

‘This was my father’s empire. I have to keep it safe or at least try’, Yuri shouts back, reloading her gun, ‘Plus, you said those things are easy to kill. I’ll be fine. You guys just get as far away from here’, Yuri shouts, walking backwards and further away from the ship, ‘Just go!’

‘Yuri!’, Xiumin shouts before the alien can get further away from him, ‘Be safe!’, he sees Yuri salute to him, giving him an assuring smile before running to the other side, disappearing in between the fallen buildings and dead bodies.

‘Guys, get the fuck in!’, Chen screams one more time, making Xiumin move, lifting Chanyeol up first so the Chen can take him, lifting himself inside the ship.

‘Are we all here?’, he hears Baekhyun’s voice screaming from the front.

‘Yeah. All here!’, Chen shouts back, counting everyone, eyes scanning before giving Baekhyun a thumb’s up.

‘Then let’s get the fuck out of here’, Baekhyun orders, pressing his controls to set up a light speed escape, refuelling just in case, Kai right beside him, doing the same and checking all hit areas, sending a self-repair command on the ship, ‘Everyone, hold on tight’, Baekhyun warns all of them, his hand hovering on the lever, trying to find the perfect time, waiting for the smokes to clear before pulling it down, sending the ship to go at light speed out of EX’act and into the galaxy.

 

 

The air is cold and the rusting of pipes are the only noise being emitted inside the ship, everyone sitting down, D.O and Sehun waking up during the journey out of EX’act.

‘You had one job, one bloody job and what do you do? You get drunk’, Chen tells of the rookie soldier, his eyes glaring at the tall boy who gazes down after being told what happened shortly after he had passed out.

‘I’m sorry…’

‘Well, sorry’s not good enough. We could have all died in there’, Chen screams, stomping his foot as he looks at everyone else, ‘Did we even find any useful information?’, he looks at the others, ‘It seems like we didn’t. So not only did we stupidly risk our lives, we also wasted time’

‘Chen, calm down, I think me and Chanyeol found something’, Xiumin tries to stop the Commander from going full ballistic, reaching his hand out to get Chen to sit back down.

‘Oh, did you? Well, go on then. Share with us this information you found. Enlighten us’

‘Well… We need Chanyeol to wake up first-’

‘Oh great, all the information is inside the cyborg who malfunctions every time it breathes. Great. Fucking fantastic’

‘I’d like to see if _you_ found anything good. Have you?’, Xiumin bites back, not having the time or the patience to have to deal with Chen, his voice getting more irritated the more Chen spoke out. Baekhyun, amongst everyone, stays quiet, observing Kai the whole time, the commander’s son idly leaning on his chair, fiddling with the rings on his finger, his gun reloading by his side, hair messy and arms filled with scars.

‘Guys, can we not fight? We’re in the middle of nowhere and the Red Force could be anywhere. Whether we like it or not, we’re stuck with each other’, Suho breaks the fight, being the only one strong enough to sit Chen down, ‘Now, before we start shouting at each other again, we need to figure something out’, He walks across towards Baekhyun, ‘You said that the aircraft was shooting at us, directly at us, the moment our invisibility shield was down. What does that mean?’, everyone freezes, looking at each other as they wait for Baekhyun or Kai to answer since they were the pilots who noticed the odd behaviour of the aircraft.

‘I have no idea. Maybe it was just shooting at ships who were trying to leave? I mean, we weren’t the only ship they were trying to shoot’, Kai points out, watching everyone settle with that idea, Suho nodding slowly before turning to Baekhyun, seeing if he has the exact explanation.

‘Um… Yeah… Yeah, that seems plausible’, Baekhyun adds on, he feels his insides getting warm, his cheeks turning a scarlet red as he tries to avoid eye contact with Kai.

‘It wants something’, a voice interrupts them, croaky and tired, they turn to where they placed Chanyeol, the cyborg sitting up, rubbing his forehead with his fingers as he tries to muster enough energy to talk, ‘The Red Force wants something from us’

‘Baekhyun freezes.

‘The database was hard to decrypt, but they had a target, something they wanted to obtain, although that something, I don’t know. It was hard for me to decipher’

‘So, that’s all you know? That the Red Force wants something? Doesn’t the Red Force always want something?’, D.O points out, finally speaking up.

‘That something is in this ship’, Chanyeol informs, making everyone stare at him as if he had just grown another eye, ‘I saw their main target, and it was this very ship. Which means, whatever they were looking for, it’s in here’

‘So, the aircraft weren’t just randomly shooting at us’, Suho pieces the two together, nodding as he rests his chin on his fingers, ‘What is in this ship that the Red Force wants?’, he turns to Baekhyun.

‘This dude probably stole something else. What the fuck did you steal from the Red Force?’, Chen looks over, questioning the owner of the ship.

‘I can’t go near the Red Force. No one can! How am I supposed to steal something from the biggest threat to our galaxy? We don’t even know if the Red Force is one person or a whole fucking nation!’, Baekhyun defends himself, ‘I’m a scavenger, not a suicider’

‘Then what the fuck could they want?’

Suho looks at the draw, the draw by the main pilot’s chair, filled with junk and shit, but inside holds the light, the power to control and extract light; Baekhyun’s power. It wants Baekhyun’s power. The Red Force has taken all of their powers, extracted them right from under their skin, it now has the power of teleportation, water bending, strength, ice and fire, lightning and wind. How powerful can it become once it obtains the power of light?

‘Whatever it is, it’s in this ship’, Sehun points out, standing up, ‘Let’s search for it now. If we find something that the Red Force might want, we throw it straight out of here’

‘Wait a minute! You can’t just throw my stuff! I sell half of these for a good price!’, Baekhyun stands from his seat, pushing the rookie soldier out of his compartments.

‘Then what do you suppose we do? Run around the galaxy until the Red Force catches up with us?’, Sehun shouts back, Suho once again, pulling the two aliens away from each other. Chen and Kai debating with Suho, siding with Sehun as they talk over each other, arguing over throwing out the whole compartment of Baekhyun’s junk.

‘No… We could use it as bait…’, D.O thought to himself, being the only alien to stay seated, looking back to stare at Chanyeol, still tired and now lying down on the small mattress, ‘Wait… Guys! I have an idea!’, he shouts, now more confident as he stares at the mess in front of him, ‘We need our powers back and the Red Force needs something from us. We find whatever they’re looking for and we use it as bait to get the Red Force to come to us. Once we have them we can-’

‘Can do what? _Fight_ it? Have you not lived for the past two days? How are we supposed to defeat that _thing?’,_ Sehun argues back, seeing the flaw in D.O’s plans.

‘We don’t have to fight the Red Force. We just need it to send the machine’, Suho points out.

‘Oh, why don’t we just make a quick call from the Red Force and ask them for a specific machine to come and kill us’, Chen points out, earning a hit in the head from Kai.

‘Chen, your sarcasm is really getting annoying’, he points out.

‘That’s commander Chen to you’

‘Guys, shut up. It’s not going to work. What if we wait for the Red Force to come and they send a fleeting army?’

‘It won’t’, Suho points out, going back to the drawer.

‘And how do you know that?’

‘Because I know what it wants’, Suho replies, opening the drawer and pulling out a white orb, ‘It wants this’

‘Put that away’, Baekhyun shouts, pointing his finger at the orb resting on Suho’s hands, ‘I said put it down!’

‘It wants Baekhyun’s power’, Suho adds on, looking at the aliens standing in front of them, ‘And we are going to use it as bait to get ours back’

‘Over my dead fucking body!’, Baekhyun shouts, looking around to see everyone else agreeing with Suho’s plan, his eyes reverting back to Kai. What could the Red Force possibly want? The General Commander’s son or his measly power?

****

 

**__ **

 

 


	5. Diamond.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> rated M for mature content.

** Diamond **

 

_**playlist five:[diamond](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQRJjoGrsqw)** _

 

* * *

 

The ship sails alone, in the middle of the galaxy, furthering away from any planet, eight aliens standing in the centre of the ship, eyes glaring at each other, arms reached out, laser guns on each hand, pointing at each other.

‘Give that back’, Suho commands, laser gun pointing in between Baekhyun’s eyebrows.

‘No’

‘Baekhyun…’

‘This is my orb, my power and my ship. I can kick all of you out as we speak, so I wouldn’t pull the trigger if I were you…’, Baekhyun warns laser guns pointing at Suho and Chen.

‘Guys, we need to think of a better way. Imagine if someone took your powers without your consent’, D.O butts in between, his small self-made laser guns pointing at Suho and Sehun whereas the rookie soldier was pointing his guns at D.O and Chanyeol who points his guns at Kai whereas the commander’s son holds one gun at Chen, his General.

‘I’ve _had_ my powers stolen from me’, Sehun bites back, ‘Why do you think I’m in this mess’

‘Now, now Sehun. Don’t kill the kid, he has a point, this is inhumane’, Kai points out, ‘Now, everyone, leave Baekhyun’s power alone’, Kai points to everyone, ‘And let’s act civil, shall we?’

‘Civil? Baekhyun nearly killed me!’, Sehun whines, pointing at his jacket which had a burn mark skidded on the back, ‘Who knew light can be dangerous’, recalling the reason why they were all pointing their guns at each other, Sehun’s attempt to steal Baekhyun’s power orb turned into a nasty argument once Baekhyun pierces something hot onto his arms, burning him.

‘Light is also a heat energy you dumbass. For an EXO’rdium soldier, you really are dumb’, Baekhyun snorts, his laugh cut short once Sehun pulls the trigger, the laser hitting the wall of his ship.

‘Guys! Guys!’, Xiumin shouts, being the only one without a gun in his hands, stretching his hand out to calm everyone down, ‘Let’s think of a plan that keeps all of us on the ship and alive please’, Xiumin calls over, calmly setting Sehun and Suho’s gun down, looking at everyone and ordering everyone to do the same.

‘Rabbi Xiumin has got a point’, Suho sighs out in defeat, ‘We all need to calm down. Everyone, guns down’, he orders, and with his words, everyone else drags their guns down, Sehun and Chen still glaring at Baekhyun, ‘We’ll think of a better way’, Suho reassures everyone, reaching his hand out to pat Sehun’s back, giving everyone, a look before turning back to the front of the ship, checking their coordinates with Chen right behind him.

‘Sorry about that Mr Baekhyun, I guess everyone here is just desperate’, Chanyeol murmurs the moment the aliens disperse, the cyborg being the only one to approach Baekhyun, exLLE sleeping soundlessly at the back of the control system, unaware of her owner’s distress.

‘Whatever’, Baekhyun dismisses the robot, eyes never leaving the commander’s son, his tone muscles flexing as he cleans his guns.

‘It seems as though you’ve taken an interest in Kai’, Chanyeol points out, zooming his vision to where Baekhyun was staring at, the two aliens now looking at the alien boy in front of them.

‘I have not’, Baekhyun bites back, zipping his back pocket where his orb is at, just in case one of them tries to steal it again like earlier on.

‘Yes, you are. Are you in any way… Attracted to the alien?’

‘ _Attracted?!_ Are you bloody insane?!’, he hisses, walking back to his compartment, doublechecking if his scavenged items were still present.

‘Then why have your eyes reverted back to him ever since we got back from the spaceship?’, the tall cyborg follows him behind, his voice sounding a little bit more normal since Baekhyun gave him a second flask of diesel, Chanyeol hasn’t malfunctioned for the whole day.

‘It has not’, Baekhyun defends himself, trying to push the alien out of his way but it seems as though the refuel has given him energy which they both didn’t need, ‘Chanyeol, can you get out of my way please’, Baekhyun commands, pushing him aside until they’re at the end of the ship, out of the controller room and out of ear’s reached.

‘You’re interested in him all of a sudden and if it’s not for mating reasons-’

‘No, it’s _not_ for mating season’

‘Then it’s for something else’, Chanyeol scans the alien’s face, zooming in on his pores which had started to sweat, ‘You know something about him… Don’t you’, Baekhyun grabs him, pulling him closer and away from the door.

‘Look, you tell anyone and I’ll rip your wires out of you. Do you understand?’, Baekhyun threatens the cyborg, pressing his whole body against him, pointing his finger at Chanyeol’s face.

‘Yeah. Yeah, I understand’, Baekhyun relaxes his grip on Chanyeol’s collar.

‘I think the Red Force wants Kai’, Baekhyun whispers, Chanyeol looking confusingly at him.

‘Why would they want Kai? They want your power’

‘No, they don’t. Why would they?’

‘Because they took ours’, Chanyeol comments, but Baekhyun just shakes his head.

‘That doesn’t mean anything. If they wanted my power, mine specifically, they wouldn’t have attack EXO’dus and ex’ACT’

‘Yes, they would. We were there’

‘But my spaceship wasn’t. I never park my ship in the Black Market, I’m a hunted scavenger’, Baekhyun points out, making Chanyeol think for a moment, looking back at him in the moment of realisation, ‘It’s never inside’

‘If they were really after your power, they would’ve targeted the ship itself, outside the perimeter of the cities… Unguarded…’

‘But they attacked the cities itself. Which means their target was inside’

‘But why would they want Kai?’

‘He’s the commander’s son. They could use him as ransom or infiltrate the EXO’rdium army. How am I supposed to know? But all I know is that it’s Kai they want’

‘But… Wouldn’t that mean our plan is a bust?’’

‘What plan?’

‘To use your powers as bait to send the machine that stole our powers… What are we going to do now that we know your powers aren’t what they want?’, Chanyeol asks, looking on the floor as if the answer is posted on it, ‘Wait… Why didn’t you mention it to everyone? About Kai?’

‘Because he’s the commander’s son and there’s one second in command, one government rabbi and one soldier inside my ship’, Baekhyun informs Chanyeol as if he’s forgotten, ‘I could fucking die’

‘Then what are we going to do if we can’t tell them?’

‘We pretend that we don’t know anything, continue to believe that they want my power’

‘But that’s not going to get us anywhere’

‘Yes, it will, make them think my orb is what they want, Kai is going to be with us when we contact the Red Force. We just need to keep him alive once that happens. We let everyone believe my orb is what it wants, but we use Kai as bait instead, Got it?’, Baekhyun informs Chanyeol, the cyborg understanding their plan, nodding his head in agreement. What Baekhyun said is true, Kai was going to be present so they still have what the Red Force wants.

Just before they can go back to the control room where everyone is, they hear the doors opening to the compartment, startling the both of them to press against the wall, Chanyeol’s eyes twitching due to nervousness, his system overheating from Baekhyun’s body pressed over against him.

‘Shh, shh, stay still’, Baekhyun whispers, looking behind him to see who was walking inside, his eyes looking down on a pair of boots walking nearer towards them, ‘Bloody hell’, he whines, turning back to face Chanyeol, reaching out to hold the cyborg’s confused face, leaning in to kiss Chanyeol on the lips. Baekhyun couldn’t explain the weird buzzing noises coming out of Chanyeol the moment their lips met, Chanyeol’s hands twitching due to the sudden contact.

‘Woah, guys what the hell?’, Xiumin’s voice blares across the moment the Rabbi turns a corner to find the two aliens making out, ‘What the fuck? Since when were you two close?’, Xiumin shouts across, closing his eyes.

‘Xiumin? What the hell are you doing here?’, Baekhyun questions, letting go of Chanyeol, acting surprised as soon as Xiumin walks near them.

‘I’m looking for my bag. I hid it here before we landed in EX’act’, Xiumin informs them, looking around in the different compartment, opening every drawer before smiling, pulling out his brown side bag almost torn and covered in ashes.

‘Why are you so attached to your bag?’, Baekhyun questions, raising his eyebrows as Xiumin wraps the back on him like a baby.

‘It has all of my important texts inside. It’s not leaving my side’, Xiumin points out, patting it before walking out, looking at the two aliens with a judging expression before walking out.

‘Right…’, Baekhyun breathes out, turning back to pat Chanyeol’s arm, ‘That was close, eh?’, he chuckles, looking up to see Chanyeol still frozen still, his lips slightly parted, cheeks burning red, ‘You alright?’, Baekhyun asks, tapping Chanyeol’s shoulder, slightly worried that the alien has malfunctioned once again.

Chanyeol’s cheeks twitch, the buzzing accelerating before stopping.

‘Huh?’, he finally speaks, looking down at Baekhyun.

‘I asked if you were alright’, Baekhyun repeats himself, stepping away from Chanyeol, turning around to start walking out of the compartment, ‘Are you coming or not?’, Baekhyun shouts across the room, startling Chanyeol to his movement, following along behind Baekhyun, making their way silently across the ship and back to the control room, opening the door to find Chen and Sehun both calm and playing another round of Lucky Ones, D.O staring at Sehun’s cards whereas Xiumin has made his way to the corner, writing notes on his notebook, looking up to watch both Baekhyun and Chanyeol walking in, winking playfully at the both of them.

‘Where have you been?’, Suho asks, watching Baekhyun sit down next to him in the main pilot seat, checking their coordinates and the structure of his ship, sending waves of invisibility over the front base of his ship just in case.

‘We were mating’, Chanyeol points out suddenly, making everyone stop what they were doing, Xiumin snorting in the corner as Baekhyun swivels his chair around, glaring at Chanyeol who’s cheeks twitched.

‘Mating?’, Kai repeats slowly, looking between Baekhyun and Chanyeol, a smirk slowly etching on his face, ‘Since when did you go for cyborgs, Mr Scavenger?’, Kai playfully jokes, raising his eyebrows at the pilot in front who’s shaking his head in anger, continuing to shoot daggers at Chanyeol.

‘You are hopeless’, Baekhyun whispers, swivelling his chair to face the front, ignoring everyone’s whoops and sudden intrusion into his private life.

‘So Chanyeol did you and Baekhyun… Actually, do it?’, D.O ask, curious as the cyborg sits down awkwardly, fiddling with his hands.

‘He said mating, so I can only assume so’, Chen responds to D.O, the both continuing to stare at Chanyeol.

‘Oh yes, he did. He mated Baekhyun till sky high didn’t you?’, Kai laughs, walking over to pat Chanyeol harshly on the back, ‘Or did Baekhyun mate you?’

‘Kai please, no one wants to hear your disgusting innuendos’, Chen tells off the smirking alien, picking up another card and continuing his game with Sehun.

‘I’m not the one doing the innuendos’, he winks at Chanyeol, walking back to sit down right beside Sehun, looking at his cards before lifting his hand up, three fingers up, muttering a diamond.

‘Three of diamonds’, Chen states, earning a groan from Sehun who released his remaining cards, losing the game for the second time.

 

 

 

 

‘Baekhyun, I know your power means a lot to you, and I know we’re already intruding enough, but if we can use the orb to at least send a message to the Red Force, we might actually stand a chance in getting our powers back’, Suho tries to persuade Baekhyun one last time, the two aliens steering the ship further away the main galactic highway. Baekhyun breathes out a sigh, rolling his eyes as he leans back on his chair, fiddling with the rings on his finger, one he found lying around the mansion of one of the Generals he slept with years ago.

‘Fine’, he gives in, looking at Suho who’s eyes brighten.

‘Wait… Are you serious?’, Suho asks again, not quite sure if he got it right, leaning his head in to hear Baekhyun’s reply.

‘I said okay. But the orb stays with me’, Baekhyun warns Suho, ‘You can use it as long as I’m with it, got it?’

‘Yes! Yeah, sure, of course!’, Suho smiles, clapping his hand together and leaning out to hug Baekhyun, only to be pushed back by the latter.

‘You must be desperate to get your powers back’

‘I am! I really am!’, Suho gleams, lowering his voice after looking back to see the other aliens turning their heads back, curious to the sudden noise at the front.

‘Why?’

‘What do you mean why?’

‘Why are you so desperate to get your powers back? You’re an ex-captain with no ship and no crew. You’re also unemployed since EXO’dus has just crashed to the ground’, Baekhyun points out, looking down at the old captain, infamous in his intelligence once upon a time, more infamous than Baekhyun, and he’s been hunted for years.

‘I need to find someone’

‘Someone?’

‘An old crew mate…’

 

 

 

 

The noises of loud honking filled the streets, smokes emitting from the engines as a man crosses the street, holding a pile of folders, his glasses pursed up, sliding down due to the heat, shouts from street sellers fills the street, smells of street food and old metal passing by him.

‘Hey! Watch it kid!’, a lady screams at him, rolling her windows down and giving him a finger before driving off forward into the road, startling the man to freeze for a moment, waiting for the cars to pass by before crossing another street, getting nearer to a tall building, a bank placed at the centre of the city, businessmen and women in formal attire walking in and out with their coffees and briefcases, their focus occupied to the phones posted on their ears.

Walking inside the building, the man struggles to keep the filed folders on one of his arm as he reaches out with the other, his hand getting a hold of his I.D, swiping it at the gates before entering the main halls, bowing to his superiors as he walks to the stairs since he knew the elevators will be full to the brim this morning.

After passing thirty flights of stairs, he wipes his forehead, getting rid of his sweat which had started dripping down his head, straightening his suit as he reaches his floor, opening the door.

‘Good morning Mr Wang’, he greets his manager who walks past him, idly placing another folder in his pile, making his arms ache even more.

‘I want all these reports down by the end of the day’, his manager commands, ‘I need it to be by my desk, got it?’, he doesn’t want for the man to reply, walking off into his private office, shutting the door behind him. Breathing out a sigh, he bows to everyone else, placing the folders on a small desk in one of the3 comparted office in the main room.

‘Hello, Zhang Yixing. Rough night?’, his co-worker swivels his chair nearer to his office, looking at the man ahead to find Yixing’s hair a mess, his eyes droopy due to working late in the night.

‘Rough year mate’, Yixing replies, laughing as his co-worker gives him a nod of understanding, saluting him on before going back to his desk, leaving Yixing to write another dozen of report till early morning sunrise, ‘Ah shit’, he whines as he glides his hand out to grab a folder, his finger grazing on a piece of paper, giving him a papercut, blood trickling out of the small cut, ‘Yikes, that doesn’t look good’, he whispers to himself, gliding his other hand over the cut, pressing on it lightly and wiping the excess blood, his cut healed and long gone.

‘Zhang Yixing! Come here!’

‘Coming Mr Wang!’

 

 

 

 

‘We need to hide somewhere, we can’t keep wasting fuel running around in circles’, Baekhyun turns to Suho. Looking back to see everyone else sleeping, Kai leaning on Chen as he hugs onto the second in command like a stuffed toy.

‘We can’t land this ship on a planet, we can’t let anyone else die’, Suho argues, rubbing his eyes and yawning, trying to keep awake as the hours passed by.

‘We’ll go somewhere were the Red Force can’t come in’

‘And where exactly is that?’, Suho asks, snorting since it seems the Red Force can go anywhere.

‘To the most guarded and central planet in the world’, Baekhyun points out, already typing out the coordinates of by heart. He was a scavenger, after all, he knew every place in the corner, even the corners of the universe he’d visited.

‘And where is that?’

‘Elyxion, you dumb captain’, Baekhyun makes fun out of Suho once the Captain nods in agreement. Elyxion, the capital planet which coexists right next to the military based planet, EXO planet. That planet will be safe, not only so, but Suho was for sure certain that if the Red Force ever decides to attack, there will at least be a warning, enough time for them to get out and escape before anything happens.

‘Fine. Elyxion it is’, Suho gives in, turning off his controller and allowing Baekhyun to drive his ship alone, leaning back to sleep for the remaining journey.

‘Where are we going?’, D.O asks the moment he wakes up, noticing the different alignment of the stars, they were back in the galactic highway.

‘Elyxion’, Baekhyun informs him, the mechanic walking towards him, leaning on Baekhyun’s chair.

‘Elyxion? I’ve never been to Elyxion before’, he comments, his eyes gleaming at the thought that he could finally visit the grand planet, filled with so many things he could fix, new metals that he’d probably never seen before.

‘You’re sure going to love it’, Baekhyun comments, smiling as D.O pushes a sleeping Suho over, sitting on the co-pilot’s chair, ‘Especially Edge’s corner’

‘What’s Edges corner?’

‘It’s an area in Elyxion which focuses on new inventions, factories upon factories building and making new things. I got a singing laser gun there one time’

‘Who needs a singing laser gun?’

‘Someone who likes to joke’, Baekhyun chuckles, reaching his hand out to stroke exLLE who had woken up, sitting beside her owner, meowing aloud once she notices movements behind.

‘Shit Chanyeol, you nearly scared all of us’, D.O breathes out the moment he sees a shadow hovering behind them, turning back to see Chanyeol looking out of the front window.

‘Chanyeol, go and sit back down, we haven’t arrived at Elyxion yet’, Baekhyun orders cyborg, steering them to the left where they are greeted with other ships, probably going to the same place.

‘Wait, aren’t you going to get caught if we go to Elyxion’, D.O asks, concerned all of a sudden that their pilot might get arrested.

‘Don’t worry. I have a few friends there, they’ll keep me invisible when we get there’, Baekhyun reassures the boy beside him, turning his lever to slow down his ship once he sees traffic ahead. Chanyeol, who is still standing behind them zooms his eyes at the ships ahead of them.

‘Why are we going Elyxion?’, Chanyeol asks, looking down at Baekhyun who just dismisses him with a wave of a hand.

‘Just sit back down and wait’, Baekhyun orders Chanyeol, shoving him back.

‘Can I have something first?’, Chanyeol asks, walking nearer to the pilot area.

‘What? Do you want more diesel? There’s some at the back in the-’, Baekhyun’s sentence was instantly muffled once Chanyeol grab hold of his collar, pulling him in for a kiss, surprising everyone, Baekhyun’s eyes wide open as he sits frozen, too surprised to even push the cyborg away from him, D.O raising his eyebrows once they part, Chanyeol bowing before turning back, walking back to where his mattress lies.

‘What the hell…’, Baekhyun whispers out, wiping his lips and turning back to confront Chanyeol but the alien was already back in his side, sleeping.

‘Dude, I really didn’t know you two were that close…’, D.O points out, slightly uncomfortable at the sight of the two aliens kissing right in front of them.

‘We’re not close’, Baekhyun points out, trying to shrug away that random confrontation with the cyborg, distracting himself by looking ahead, steering the ship nearer to the planet.

‘Sure…’, D.O replies, smiling slightly as he watches the usual cold and arrogant scavenger turn a slight pink.

 

 

 

 

‘What are we doing here?’, Chen hisses the moment he wakes up to the sudden noise of shouting, the ship buzzing to a stop, his eyes glaring out at the window where he sees the familiar symbol of the Elyxion; the tree of life which General Kim designed himself.

‘We need to refuel’, Suho informs, trying to calm down Chen who has started to rile up once again.

‘Why are we on the densest planet in the world? These people might die!’

‘You have low faith in your government, don’t you?’, Baekhyun laughs, throwing his orb back into the drawer, locking it and placing the keys inside the back of his pockets, much to Suho’s dismay.

‘Baekhyun’s got a point’, Sehun comments, ‘I don’t think the Red Force will be able to go against our whole army’, Sehun stands beside Chen, leaning his arm on his shoulder.

‘We may be in this mess together, but I’m still the second in command in the whole EXO’rdium army’, Chen states, shrugging Sehun’s arm off him, whining to Suho once more about how stupid this plan is.

‘It’s not a plan. It’s a break. We know what the Red Force wants and it won’t be long till we need to confront it. Which means we need to energise. Everyone, just do whatever you want for now’, Suho orders the crew before Kai stands up, jumping up and down as he scans over, looking at the bars and clubs along the street, already gleaming in happiness as he hears the sound of music blaring, ‘Right, everyone back here by tomorrow morning, got that?’, Suho commands everyone one last time before they disperse, walking out first as he looks down the road, trying to look for Edge’s corner.

‘Are you going to Edge’s corner?’, D.O follows the ex-captain, gleaming up at him as Suho strolls straight forward, looking at the once familiar streets he used to roam during his breaks.

‘Yeah’

‘Mind if I join? I wanna check out some of the new inventions’, D.O skips excitedly beside him, making Suho grin for a moment, remembering a crewmate he once had who also had a thing for mechanical engineering, always making new things even from scraps of metal and spare parts.

‘Quit following me around, and lose your jacket, will you? We can’t be found otherwise we have to report back to EXO planet, which is something I don’t feel like doing’, Chen whines, looking over at Sehun who continues to walk beside him, his official jacket still on him, showing his name and rank easily, ‘Now take it off’, Chen orders, forcing the young soldier to get rid of his jacket, throwing it in the trashcan along with his pin, Chen lowering his face, snatching two masks slyly from a street seller, giving one for Sehun to put on, trying to avoid as much eye contact with the walking soldiers.

‘This is going to be hell’, Chen whispers to himself, feeling Sehun’s arm snake its way around his arm, ‘Do you mind? Get off me’, Chen whines, prying his arm off the young soldier.

‘We need to stick together’. Sehun responds, gesturing around the crowded place, ‘If I get lost and someone found me, I’ll be dead meat…’

‘Oh, for goodness sake… Fine, come here’, Chen whines, bringing the soldier’s arm back around his, footsteps quickening once he sees familiar faces walking by their side, Chen looking down on the floor, trying to cover his face, ‘This is ridiculous’, he whispers to himself, still looking at the ground as they cross the street.

‘Chen… General Chen…’, Sehun pokes Chen’s sides, gaining his attention, pointing at the sky, the billboard planked by the building, a photo of Chen along with the words ‘rest well’ etched by the bottom.

‘What the… Do they think I’m dead?!’, he looks up, staring at his photo alongside a photo of Kai with red letters spelling out ‘missing’ in capital etched in the middle of the photo, ‘And Kai’s missing? Why did they presume I’m dead and Kai’s missing?!’

‘They probably lost hope in finding you’, Sehun points out, looking across to find that Chen’s screams have gained some attention, pulling on the man’s sleeves to get him to stop.

‘But they didn’t lose hope in finding him’, Chen comments, being reminded of what Baekhyun told him during the morning after the EXO’dus attack.

_A seat warmer._

 

 

 

 

‘Hey Kai, drink this before leaving the ship’, Baekhyun raises forward to hand Kai a small bottle, the commander’s son peering disgustingly on the green liquid inside.

‘What the hell is it?’

‘A disguise. It’ll turn you into an animeleous’

‘You mean one of those green suckers with ears that pop out like these?’, Kai imitates, pointing his fingers out on top of his head, ‘Why would I want to turn into one of those?’

‘Because you’re the commander’s son and you’re currently missing. Unless you want to be pulled away and locked up back in EXO planet and explain to your father why your powers are gone, I suggest you hide well’, Baekhyun warns him, patting him on the shoulder and urging the alien to drink the liquid, pushing him out of the spaceship.

‘Ergh, fine, but this will not help me when I get in the club’, Kai moans more to himself as he gulps down the slime, feeling it travel down his throat, ‘Yuck…’, he coughs out, looking down to see his skin turning green already, ‘Baekhyun, this taste grim’, Kai whines, walking down the stairs of the ship.

‘Don’t blame me, I didn’t make it!’, Baekhyun shouts before closing the door to his ship, looking around to see that has his ship all to himself, ‘Finally’, he smiles, sitting back down on his seat, swivelling it around with his eyes closed, hearing no screams from Kai or arguing from Chen and Sehun and no questions from Suho.

_This could be my chance. I could escape and leave them all behind._

Kai’s disguise will run out soon and someone will find him… He’ll be safe from the Red Force and everyone else will just have to worry about getting their powers back on their own. It wasn’t his problem to worry about and he had no obligation to help them out, they weren’t even friends, four of them being part of the EXO’rdium government, but with that being said, he still needed his bounty to loosen a bit, but that still wasn’t enough to face the Red Force itself.

Just before he can make up his mind, he hears something falling to the ground, startling him awake, eyes opening to look out, seeing Chanyeol bending down to pick up a spare screwdriver.

‘What are you still doing here?’, Baekhyun points out, standing up from his chair, ‘Haven’t you left yet?’

‘Aren’t you?’

‘I’m not leaving. I’m just going to rest since I haven’t slept for a whole day driving this thing around the Universe’, Baekhyun informs his, looking around to see the mess the rest of them had left his ship, cards everywhere, clothes everywhere, _crumbs_ everywhere, Kai must’ve eaten his whole stash of food by the looks of it, ‘I hope some of them found the common sense to buy food’, Baekhyun whispers, bending down to clear the mess, picking up the dirty clothes from the floor, walking into his compartment, stuffing it in his washing machine he stole from Earth. He loved visiting Earth, that planet had a lot of useful inventions that Baekhyun made use of.

‘What are you doing?’, he hears Chanyeol’s voice following behind him.

‘I’m cleaning my ship’, Baekhyun responds, closing the washing machine and turning around, pushing past the cyborg who continues to block his way, ‘Chanyeol, can you move out of my way? Seriously, you’ve been a pain in my ass since…’, Baekhyun didn’t want to recall the time he was forced to kiss Chanyeol, regretting it the moment Chanyeol started following him around like a lost puppy.

‘Can I ask for something?’

‘If you’re going to kiss me again, I swear I’m not afraid to rip your wires apart. I know where your reset button is’, Baekhyun threatens him.

‘No… I won’t kiss you again… I just…’, Chanyeol looks down at his feet, kicking a small pebble which got inside the ship, ‘I wanna know how to mate’

‘Excuse me?’

‘I’ve heard other aliens talk about it and it didn’t really intrigue me at first but…’

‘But what?’

‘It felt tingly when we kissed. Like I’ve just been energised ten times better than any fuel I’ve ever had’, Chanyeol tries to explain, Baekhyun picking up a mop, sweeping out all the dust and ashes which got caught inside his ship whilst they were trying to escape, exLLE stretching her body out before walking over, jumping on the co-pilot seat, curling herself in and finally sleeping in her favourite spot.

‘Right, well you are half alien, so I guess sex is something you learn to love too’

‘Sex?’

‘Mating Chanyeol. It sounds less animalistic if you say sex rather than mate’, Baekhyun teaches Chanyeol, continuing to sweep the floors, Chanyeol still standing awkwardly by the open door of one of Baekhyun’s compartment.

‘Sex? Then can we sex?’

Baekhyun nearly drops his broom.

‘Chanyeol… I don’t…First of all, it’s ‘can we _have_ sex’ and second of all, no, we are not having sex’

‘Why not? I’m really curious now. They say you’ll feel super tingly all over and… I just wanna know…’

‘Then go to a club and get it off with a random alien’, Baekhyun glaring over at Chanyeol, shocked that Chanyeol would even ask for such a thing from him. Who does he think Baekhyun is?

‘I don’t want to do it with just a random alien… What if I don’t feel tingly?’

‘Then that’s your problem, not mine’, Baekhyun drops his broom, stuffing it back inside his small storage space, ‘Why is it, I’m always dragged into other people’s problems?’, Baekhyun whines, more to himself, ‘And why do I let myself get dragged?’

‘Baekhyun… Can you just do it as a favour? I promise I’ll pay you back. I’ll stop drinking your diesel’, Chanyeol continues to plead with Baekhyun, walking over to stand in front of him, ‘Oh come on, it’ll just be this one time. Come on, I’m really curious and I just wanna know what it feels like’

‘Okay, fine! But you will not tell a soul about this, got it?’, Baekhyun turns back, pulling Chanyeol’s collar towards him, ‘I said, got it?’

‘Got it’, and with that Baekhyun presses his lips harshly on Chanyeol’s, dragging him back till the cyborg hits his back against the wall, his fingers tracing through his hair, eyes closed as he relished in the moment. Why not? Baekhyun hadn’t had sex for quite a long time, maybe he needed this too.

‘Take off your clothes’, he orders the cyborg, Chanyeol’s hands twitching as he lifts his shirt up, Baekhyun seeing the scars on the boy’s torso, stitches around his chest, ‘You look badly made’, Baekhyun whispers, grabbing Chanyeol back for another kiss, opening his mouth and gliding his tongue inside. Chanyeol, confused by the sudden intrusion, allows Baekhyun to explore his mouth, feeling the tingly sensation being heightened. This was way better than diesel.

‘Ugh… Baek…’, he moans the moment Baekhyun’s lips travel down from his lips and on his neck, making Chanyeol feel an overload amount of sensation the alien could not fathom, making him emit the oddest of noises, his hands grabbing hold of Baekhyun’s hair as he continues to glide down, the latter’s knees landing to the ground, his hands fumbling to unzip Chanyeol’s jeans.

‘You’re more alien than robot, aren’t you?’, Baekhyun looks up, laughing at Chanyeol’s forever confused and innocent look, ‘Gosh, you’re innocent too. I guess that can be kinda fun for me’, Baekhyun whispers, grabbing hold of Chanyeol’s cock, laughing as he hears Chanyeol hiss, his hands gripping tightly on his shoulders, ‘Quit whining, I’ve only just touched it’, Baekhyun continues to make fun out of the hot mess that was Chanyeol, looking up to see the cyborg’s reaction once he began stroking, trying to hold in a laugh as he sees Chanyeol’s eyes shut close, his cheeks twitching. He can feel the buzzing of wires inside Chanyeol vibrating, the boy’s eyes changing colours, from pink to purple than to bright red. He begins to calm himself, if Chanyeol was going to have fun, he might as well do too, closing his eyes at the sudden simulation he was giving himself.

‘I’ve never given a handjob to a cyborg before. This is kinda fun’, Baekhyun comments, quickening his pace as he sees some of Chanyeol’s wires blinking inside his chest, ‘I wonder…’, Baekhyun thought to himself, before pressing his lips to the tip and licking it softly, causing another moan from the latter, head rolled back, eyes turning into multicolour, hues of greens and red. Baekhyun confidently engulfs Chanyeol’s cock around his mouth, slowly finding a rhythm, a pace not too slow yet not too fast that their fun would end soon.

‘Ugh… Baekhyun… Please… I don’t…’, Chanyeol didn’t know what to say, closing his eyes to feel the intense sensation climbing all over him just with Baekhyun’s tongue moving along, making him moan in pleasure, not really sure what either of them is doing, but loving every moment of it. He can feel something rising up inside him like he was going to explode, he closes his eyes and checked if one of his databases had combusted, but everything seems normal, ‘Baek… Ugh… Baekhyun, Ah… I feel like I’m going… To explode…’, Chanyeol whines in between his moans, feeling his stomach tightening, closing his eyes shut as he feels it climbing up, Baekhyun’s quickened pace not helping, ‘Baekhyun… Ah…’, he releases something, he can feel it, but he doesn’t know what. Looking down, he watches Baekhyun gulp something down, detaching himself and wiping his lips with his fingers, looking down.

‘White? That’s an odd colour for it’, Baekhyun whispers to himself, coughing out a bit as he stands up, taking his shirt off.

‘Is that us sexing?’, Chanyeol asks, breathless and dazed.

‘It’s called ‘ _having sex_ ’ not sexing. And no, that’s not us having sex’

‘Then what is?’

‘This’, Baekhyun says before pushing Chanyeol, his back laying on the torn mattress on the floor, Baekhyun sliding Chanyeol’s jeans so that they’re completely off the cyborg, his hands unzipping his jeans as he too dismisses all his clothing, just skin against skin – well, and metal – Baekhyun straddling on Chanyeol, bending down to kiss Chanyeol on the lips, grinding slowly against him, trying to wake up Chanyeol’s shaft again, both their cocks grinding against each other.

‘Ah… Ah, Baekhyun, wait… Why… What are you doing?’, Chanyeol moans, looking down to see Baekhyun’s small movements, sending shots of pleasure down below, the familiar sensation he felt only moments ago coming back.

‘You said you wanna learn how to mate? Well, this is how you mate’, Baekhyun whispers back, lifting himself up as he aligns himself, hovering just above Chanyeol’s tip.

‘Ah… Ah…’, Baekhyun groans out as he lowers himself, his self-lubrication not being enough to cater Chanyeol’s cock, a slight burning as he lowers himself down.

‘Baekhyun… Ah… _Shit’_

‘Fuck Chanyeol…’, Baekhyun groans, stilling for a moment as he rests his hands on Chanyeol’s torso, waiting for a moment so he can adjust, Chanyeol closing his eyes in pleasure, moaning out Baekhyun’s name continuously, grinding his hips up slightly, only to be pinned down by Baekhyun.

‘Give me a minute, will you?’, Baekhyun whines, settling the both of them down for a minute before he lifts himself up, pacing himself slowly as he bounces, quickening his pace once his burning sensation ends, leaving him with nothing but immense pleasure.

‘Baekhyun… Ah… _Fuck_ ’, Chanyeol can only moan in pleasure, leaving Baekhyun to do all of the work, lifting his body up and down, his head rolled over and eyes closed as he relishes in the moment, feeling the sensation rile up inside him, his own shaft hardening as he continues to bounce on Chanyeol, trails of moans emitting from his open lips, whispering the latter’ name.

‘Chanyeol… I’m… I’m…’, Baekhyun comes at last, feeling his insides exploding through, breaking at the seams as he rests his head on Chanyeol’s chest, feeling his cum all over the cyborg’s torso, continuing to grind down as he waits for Chanyeol’s second release, the cyborg not giving a warning as he releases for the second time in Baekhyun.

‘Sorry…’, he whispers as he feels Baekhyun pull out of him, the latter lying beside him on the worn-out mattress, looking up at the ceiling of his ship.

‘Not a word from anyone, got it?’, he threatens Chanyeol one more time before closing his eyes, giving in to sleep as he lets Chanyeol lay next to him. He was going to regret this when he wakes up.

 

 

 

 

Baekhyun stirs in his sleep, trying to get the feeling of something wet off him, pushing something heavy off to the side.

‘What the…’, he whispers once he feels it again, something stroking him, slow and gentle, stirring him awake, ‘What… Chanyeol? What are you doing?’, Baekhyun whines the moment he looks down to see Chanyeol’s hands wrapped around his cock, pumping painfully slow.

‘This is what you were doing to me earlier on. I wanna learn how to do it too’, Chanyeol looks up at Baekhyun who was no wide awake, rolling his head back as he feels Chanyeol squeeze, ‘Am I doing it right?’

‘Chanyeol… _Shit… Ah…_ Get… Off of me…’, Baekhyun tries to make Chanyeol stop, but his body refuses to listen to him, slowly giving in Chanyeol’s touches.

‘But I wanna learn how to do it’, Chanyeol whines, looking down at his hands, slightly confused as to what to do next, so he stops, looking up at Baekhyun, waiting patiently.

‘Ergh, I fucking hate you’, Baekhyun also whines the moment he feels Chanyeol’s hand stop moving, ‘Fine, move your hand up and down’, Baekhyun orders, glaring at Chanyeol as the cyborg follows, slowly starting to move his hand again, ‘A bit faster than that’, Baekhyun whispers, moaning out as soon as Chanyeol picked up the pace.

‘How am I doing?’, Chanyeol asks again, only being answered in moans of his name, Baekhyun closing his eyes, confused as to how this came to be. One minute he’s contemplating whether to leave everyone behind in Elyxion, now he’s letting a _cyborg_ give him a handjob, ‘Do I put it in my mouth now?’

‘Do whatever the fuck you want, just finish me off’, Baekhyun groans out in pleasure, relishing in the moment Chanyeol tightens his grip and quickens his pace, opening his eyes in confusion the moment the sensation leaves along with Chanyeol’s hands, ‘What… Chanyeol?’, he looks down to see the cyborg just looking at his cock, ‘Chanyeol, can you at least do something – _Ah fuck… Ah…’,_ Baekhyun mewls the moment Chanyeol puts his dick in his mouth, sucking him off, humming as he goes down on him, making Baekhyun squirm in pleasure, ‘ _Chanyeol… Ah… Shit…’,_ Baekhyun couldn’t take it anymore, he needed his release now, and he was ashamed to admit it since Chanyeol didn’t really know what he’s doing, just sucking and bobbing up and down in a random rhythm, but Baekhyun still loved it, releasing straight into his mouth without so much of a warning, ‘S _hit…_ Sorry…’, he whispers, sitting up as soon as Chanyeol pulls out, combing his hair out as he glares at the cyborg.

‘Didn’t I tell you we’re only doing it once? Didn’t we agree on one? This isn’t once!’

‘I’m sorry! I just got carried away… I promise not to do it again’

‘Yeah of course you are. Because like we agreed on earlier, this is a one-time thing’, Baekhyun continues to glare at Chanyeol, pushing him off as he stands up, grabbing his clothes and looking at the mess they made.

‘But…’

‘No buts, _one time._ Got it?’, Baekhyun points at Chanyeol before putting his clothes on, bending down to throw Chanyeol’s clothes at him, ‘Now get changed and help me clean this whole ship if you’re not leaving’, Baekhyun orders, opening his storage room and grabbing his broom out once again.

_I’m fucking insane. Why would I let a cyborg fuck me?_

Baekhyun could not begin to hate himself even more.

 

 

 

 

 

 


	6. Forever

** Forever **

 

_**playlist six:[forever](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7sQYvxjMac)** _

 

* * *

 

D.O is lost, he doesn’t know where he is and he regrets separating from Suho. That’s what he gets from being too intrigued in a piece of the spaceship in the repair shop, telling Suho to go ahead, leaving him behind on the big planet with the heaviest population. How was he going to find the ship now?

‘I hate myself’, he groans, looking around to see if he can spot Suho or anyone else for that matter. He was starting to sweat and soon he can feel a breakdown coming. What if another attack happens? What if Chen is not here to defend him? Or Sehun? Or Baekhyun? D.O is starting to realise just how useless he is compared to everyone else in the crew, his eyes looking down as he is reminded of how useless he is, compared to a General and a soldier, he’s nothing but a useless, small planet boy with nothing but to offer.

‘Hey babies, slow down, daddy needs to breathe’

Kyungsoo’s ears twitch. He knows that voice. His eyes look up, searching for a tanned skin alien with dark hair and a smirk. Footsteps pacing down the street, he spins around, trying to look for the voice again, squinting his eyes just in case he missed the alien.

‘And who is this cute little bird?’

He hears the voice again, but for the life of him could not find the actual alien, running around frantic, in search of that voice. That is until his eyes laid upon something odd, a green animelous, his ears shrinking every second.

‘What the…’, he squints, taking a closer look to find that it was not an animelous, probably an alien with shapeshifting abilities and why was it shapeshifting to someone who looks slightly familiar, toned bronze skin, tall and dark-haired, smiling with full red lips, ‘Kai?’, he whispers as he draws himself nearer. The other aliens seemed to be too drunk to notice a certain alien shifting, laughing and drinking until they’ve collapsed onto the floor and it isn’t even noon yet. D.O, being the only one to notice Kai’s full transformation, pushes past the drunks, whispering his apologies until he’s facing Kai.

‘Oh, hello little kid’, Kai gleams, noticing the rookie mechanic glaring at him, taking off his jacket and throwing it on his head, ‘What the fuck?’, Kai mumbles, trying to take it off only for D.O to wrap his arms around him, dragging him away from the club, ignoring his cries for help, ‘Little kid! Little kid, where are you taking me!’

‘First of all, I’m older than you!’, D.O shouts, looking from side to side before crossing the road, squinting his eyes as he tries to read the signs, maybe it can lead him back to the spaceship. D.O had stolen one of Xiumin’s textbooks and started reading the lineage of Military leaders of EXO’rdium out of boredom, only to find out that the commander’s son was a whole _year_ younger than him. He allowed Kai to talk informally to him and even let him call him little kid when it should be the other way around.

‘Okay, okay, D.O… That is your name, right?’

‘I cannot believe you don’t know my name! And we’ve survived not one but _two_ attacks together’, D.O hisses at him, continuing to cover Kai’s face, smiling at the other aliens who had begun to stare oddly at him, he was indeed dragging a random alien covered in a jacket, so it wasn’t a surprise that they were gaining some attention.

‘Honey, I’ve worked with people since I was twelve and I still don’t know their name’, Kai points out, whining as he feels D.O tugging his hair as they walk on.

‘We need somewhere to hide… Your disguise is gone and we cant have people recognising you…’, D.O informs the suffocating alien who had to use his pores from his chest to breathe since his face was fully wrapped in D.O’s jacket.

‘Goddamn it… Baekhyun says it’ll last the whole day… What bullshit’, Kai complains, stuffing one of his hands inside, touching his face to find the animeleous scale was gone, his skin once again soft and smooth, ‘At least I’m beautiful again’, Kai whispers to himself, D.O, who heard him, rolls his eyes, tiptoeing to try and get a look at the street sign ahead, seeing a symbol of a ship printed on it, hoping it was the parking space which Baekhyun used. Just before he can walk out in the direction with Kai beside him, the taller had found a hole which he squints his eyes looking through, seeing light and a road ahead of them, and aliens walking towards their direction.

 _‘Shit._ Shit, shit, shit’, Kai whispers, recognising their official jacket, looking up to find his father’s soldier’s walking towards them. They’re going to know D.O is holding onto Kai, they don’t need his face to recognise him, ‘Shit, D.O, honey, you need to stir right’, Kai pats D.O’s arm.

‘Why? The ship parking is that way’

‘Yes, but unless you want to confront the soldiers ahead on why you have the missing commander’s son in a headlock, I suggest you move to the right’, Kai warns the mechanic, pushing them both to a smaller road leading to who knows where, quickening their pace as they hear the voices of the soldiers laughing along, Kai lifting his head off of D.O’s hold, looking down at the alien before grabbing his hand and making a sprint for it.

 

 

 

 

Suho looks around the shop, scanning the room and searching for a particular device. It seems as though Edge’s Corner has expanded more than he had expected, last time he visited, he knew this place like the back of his hand. He could be blindfolded and he’ll know exactly where everything is. He’d have an extra hand to help him along the way.

‘Excuse me, do you need any help with anything?’, a keeper asks, noticing Suho’s soft glides, slow but peaceful, walking around as he picks up different devices, some old and some new inventions, the odd peculiarity of a certain product placed on his palm.

‘Oh, nothing, just looking around’, he informs, giving the keeper a soft nod and a smile, looking back to the products in front of him before he turns his head back, his eyes falling straight on the symbol stitched modestly across the side of the keeper’s shirt, ‘On second thought… I think I need help in looking for something’, Suho calls out, waving his finger, gesturing for the keeper to come back.

‘And what is it, sir?’

‘I’m looking for a radio’

‘What kind of radio?’

‘That kind that can send me a message to Earth’

 

 

 

 

‘We are screwed’, D.O whines, leaning his back on the cold walls of the alleyway, dark and disgusting, with Kai beside him, breathing heavy from the running.

‘Calm down’, Kai more or less enforces his comfort, patting the boy beside him harshly on the back, ‘Chen will come sooner or later’

‘And why would he come here?’

‘Because I’m here’, D.O rolls his eyes, bending down to sit on the floor, not caring about the dirt that will most likely be painted across his trousers, breathing down with his eyes closed and heart discontented. He needs to go home. He needs his family and he needs to keep sane. It’s been less than 72 hours and his powers are still with the Red Force, he is still stuck with a bandit of idiots and he still has nowhere else to go in this absurdly humungous universe.

‘You look like you just died. Chin up dude’, Kai, once again in his failures of proper human interactions, attempts to comfort the boy beside him, leaning down on the wall to sit by him, his arms rested on his knees, ‘So, are you really a year older than me?’, he breaks the tension between them, awkwardly combing out his hair, feeling the rough ashes, which was buried in between. D.O didn’t answer, he didn’t need to, he didn’t want to converse with such an irritating human being, ‘Well, if someone like you is older than me, than I presume it’s your job to think of a plan for us to get out of here and back inside Baekhyun’s ship’

‘Why is it my job to do that?’

‘Because you just said you’re older than me’

‘But you’re the commander’s son’

‘That didn’t stop the Red Force from taking my powers, did it?’

D.O gives up. He should never have separated from Suho. At least the ex-captain had some decency to take some control of the situation.

‘Why did I bother?’, D.O whispers to himself, looking down on his torn clothes, smothered in mud and blood, ripped at the sleeves, his home planet’s symbol, small and plain, still stitched by the side pocket. And to think he’d wanted to get away from his old home. Now he wants nothing more than to get back home, ‘I wanna go home…’

‘Don’t we all kid’, Kai mutters, holding his hand up in surrender once D.O gave him an aggressive glare, ‘Alright, I’ll stop calling you kid’, he chuckles, seeing D.O hands clench, trying to stop itself from punching the commander’s son.

_I want to go home._

What’s stopping D.O? This is the Red Force he’s talking about, he’s never going to get his powers back. Maybe Kai and Chen or even Sehun has a chance of fighting it, but him? Not in a million years. He only fixes junk and invents shit he thinks might be useful. His powers are long gone and he’s never going to get them back, but that’s okay because the farm doesn’t need his powers. He just needs to work a little bit more diligently, but he can live, he can survive.

‘I’m going home’, D.O whispers, standing up and rubbing off the dirt on his sleeves and pants.

‘Hey, hey! Where are you going?’, Kai calls the moment he noticed the smaller walking away and back to the busy streets of Elyxion, his arm reached out, trying to grab the alien back to him.

‘I’m going home! I’m sure there’s a bus ship travelling further down the rural galaxies’, maybe they’ll pass his planet.

‘What do you mean you’re going home? We need to report back to Baekhyun’s ship by morning! You can just walk out and leave!’, Kai shouts at him, racing forward before walking a few steps back once they’ve made through the cracks of the opening, the light of the city flashing through as the day only grows busier.

‘You guys defeat the Red Force yourself. I’ll just settle myself into a powerless alien. I can live with that’, D.O informs Kai, trying to persuade himself that being powerless was going to be okay. He can live with it, he never liked his powers all that much anyway, they were too much of a nuisance most of the time.

‘D.O! Come back here!’, Kai calls over, worrying the more the alien draws further away from him, the figure flooding with the many aliens walking on the road, ‘D.O!’, Kai closes his eyes, gripping hard on his hair in frustration as he looks back up to see D.O turning to a corner, leaving his view, ‘Goddamn it’

‘Excuse me sir, but can you tell me the direction of the nearest ship pick up station?’, D.O approaches a soldier, wearing similar clothing as to what he saw Sehun was sporting, but much cleaner and in a more burgundy colour, tall and quite intimidating. If D.O hadn’t witnessed two gruesome attacks in the last two days, he wouldn’t have the guts to even look at him let alone approach him for a question.

‘You wanna turn to the left for the nearest pick up station’, he informs, gesturing his hands to the direction, giving D.O an informative nod and an odd look as he looks down on his ripped clothes before separating from him, only to be pushed aside by an alien, covered in dirt and wearing ripped clothes smothered in blood, tanned skin flashed in cuts and bruises, but still toned.

‘Kai?!’, D.O screams, covering his mouth the instant it came out, looking around to see every single eye flashing across them, the soldier’s eyes widening the moment the two made eye contact, Kai crouched down, one hand gripping D.O’s wrist whilst the other was sporting a fully loaded laser gun.

‘Lieu – Lieutenant _Kai_?!’, the solider almost chokes on his own saliva, looking at the very much alive alien smiling raggedly at him.

‘Well, I almost forgot I still had a post in the army…’, Kai whispers more to himself as he hears someone address him as such, giving him a small salute, ‘How’s it going?’, he replies, only to stretch out his arm to shoot his laser in the direction of a small coffee shop opposite to where they were standing, an explosion causing everyone to gear their attention to the fire which had started.

‘Run!’, Kai exclaims, grabbing D.O one more time and making a sprint to the parking area, head down and focused as to try not to be seen by anyone else, especially the cameras around the whole city.

 

 

 

 

Chen and Sehun ended up being the two alien who happened to be stuck inside the said café which had just exploded in fire.

‘What the fuck?’, Sehun screeches, spilling his mocha latte, a Planet Earth delicacy, one he had to get in line for almost twenty minutes for, ‘Why is it not my day today?!’, he exclaims, looking down at his already torn shirt now spilt with hot coffee.

‘What was that?’, Chen declares, gulping the rest of his drink, looking outwards at the shredded glass, opening his view to the outside where he sees an EXO’rdium soldier screaming onto his intercom.

‘Commander Kim’s son is alive. I repeat, Lieutenant Kai is here and alive!’, he screams, informing not only the soldier on the other end of the intercom but everyone else within a mile radius away from him.

‘Oh Kai, you little fucker’, Chen whines, punching his clenched fist on the table, seeing the burning furniture and screaming aliens trying to escape the café, ‘Come on Sehun, its time for us to go’, he whines, pushing his mask back up and grabbing Sehun’s arm, raising out of the café to the direction of Baekhyun’s ship, the lights of every building warning everyone to look out for the Commander’s son who is running wild in Elyxion, every soldier turning in their gaze in search, making both Chen and Sehun even more paranoid.

‘Is the Commander’s son always this reckless?’, Sehun looks up, seeing a photo of Kai running with D.O by his side, both of their faces zoomed in and scanned, the database and their information plastered in every billboard of the planet, by no means probably reaching EXO planet itself.

‘Kai is not reckless’, Chen shouts as he makes a run for it, his voice muffled by the mask, ‘He’s just a fucking idiot’

 

 

 

 

‘Captain Suho of the Boomerang, huh. I heard you were dead’, the keeper looks at the alien, his tattered clothes confirming that he’d just survived an attack, ‘I heard you were in EXO’dus during the attack’

‘Nope, wherever did you hear that?’, Suho hums, tapping his fingers smoothly as he waits for the keeper to finish fixing up the second-hand radio since he couldn’t find a new one.

‘Your clothes…’, Suho looks down on the rip which ran across his chest.

‘Well… You know, times are hard for me’, Suho chuckles, trying to brush off the bit of dirt by his white shirt, drawing his jacket sleeves down as he sees a bit of blood on the ends of his shirt sleeves, ‘Poverty is such a pain, right?’

‘Right…’, the keeper continues to look at Suho suspiciously, typing up his receipt and giving him the calculations of how much the radio cost, ‘So… Where exactly where you when the attack happened?’

‘Huh? Oh… Well… You know… I was in the… Umm…’, Suho pauses, trying to make up a believable story on the spot, ‘EXO Planet! I was back on EXO Planet trying to get a job! Haha, yep, that was exactly where I was…’, Suho continues to chuckle in between, handing the keeper a view golden chips he stole from Baekhyun – he’ll apologise later – grabbing the radio and giving a salute to the keeper before walking out, looking down to see his clothes was not selling him well – people were definitely going to assume things.

‘Alert. Alert. Kim Kai, Lieutenant Kim Kai is present in Elyxion. Please report back to EXO Planet, or you will be detained’

‘What the…’, Suho looks around to see both Kai and D.O’s faced plastered everywhere in the sky through the holographic billboards. Suho makes a run for it.

 

 

 

 

_The Red Force is an accumulation of the discontent, bound in a revolution that was doom to fail due to the enforcement of the EXO’rdium Army, The Red Force was forced to go into hiding, planning their attacks in the valleys of the darkness._

Xiumin continues to read, his fingers grazing on the old paper, scratched and burnt at the edges. It seems as though the book Baekhyun gave him was a book which aged, the smell of moss and something odd emitted from the paper, some of the ink splurged, making it harder for Xiumin to read and decipher since some of the pages were written in a different language. Thank god he could speak 500 languages.

_Their main goal is to attack the heart._

‘What heart?’, Xiumin whispers, looking through the different book he found in the library he’s currently buried in, books upon books about the EXO’rdium history, the librarian seeing his enthusiasm, placed another book by his side, a book with a cover of a tree on it.

**_Red Alert. Red Alert. Lieutenant Kai, please report back to EXO Planet immediately._ **

Xiumin, dead set on killing Kai, stuffs the other books back into his bag the moment he hears the announcement, not looking at what he’s put inside, but rushing to get out the moment he sees the screen flash with an alert for Kai to report back to EXO Planet, along with soldier’s running our of the library in search for their Commander’s son, forcing Xiumin to pick up the pace as he picks and choose which book to leave behind unread, his hands shaking as he tries to walk out of the library as calmly as possible, his head hung low, making a run for it as soon as he reaches outside.

‘Relax my ass’, Xiumin hisses to himself as he holds onto his bag, ‘Why did I think I’d have a chance to relax, when I’m stuck with these idiots’, he shouts the moment he sees another picture right beside Kai and D.O running, one of Sehun, masked ripped off him as he tries to fan the fire with a piece of clothing on Chen’s arm, the second in command being recognised almost instantly with his face full on show, open mouth and screeching.

**_General Chen, please report back to EXO Planet immediately._ **

‘Ergh, I’d rather be stuck with a sludge alien than with these _idiots’,_ Xiumin whines as he continues to run towards the direction of the parking area, pushing pass running aliens to see if the General was really alive, curiosity filling the whole city as not one but _two_ important aliens, known to be dead and missing is alive and causing an absolute ruckus.

‘Baekhyun! Open up!’, Xiumin shouts the moment he reaches the wide parking space, knocking on the ship entrance – well, banging more so – shouting for Baekhyun to open the door, Chanyeol being the first to open the small entrance by the side which led straight to the control room, his eyes falling on Chen, crouched and sitting on the floor whining as Suho tries to mend his burnt arm, ‘What the fuck were the two of you thinking!’, Xiumin screams, kicking Sehun in the shin the moment he approached them.

‘What the hell are you talking about?’, Chen shouts back, but before they can start to argue, Baekhyun’s holographic intercom turns on, the screen showing a video of Chen and Sehun, their mask still on, Sehun tripping over a fallen chair, pulling Chen along with him who lands on a BBQ grill by the side of a restaurant, his arm landing straight on the burning metal, his mask ripped off due to the credulity of his scream, his face instantly getting discovered. Baekhyun, Chanyeol, Suho and Xiumin watches as Chen tries to kick Sehun, punching him on the back as the soldier grabs a jacket laid on another chair, trying to get rid of the fire which started to burn on the General’s arm.

‘Is that video playing all over Elyxion?’, Chanyeol whispers, looking back to see Sehun guiltily looking at his General with the utmost of regret whilst Chen closes his eyes in embarrassment. He was dead a few moments ago and his resurrected grand entrance was of him assaulting a rookie soldier whilst his other arm was on fire.

‘And every ship’s intercom within a 50-mile radius from Elyxion’, Baekhyun informs, turning back around to press a button on his control system, turning off the hologram.

‘Just fucking drive out of here, please’, Chen groans, not wanting to look at anyone.

‘But… What about Kai and D.O’

‘They’re not here yet?’, Xiumin shouts, looking around to see the little devils being the only two not present in the ship, ‘Where the hell are they?!’

 

 

 

 

‘Why did you do that!’, D.O punches Kai’s arm the moment they’re brought back to square one, stuck inside a dumpster once Kai spotted a group of soldier’s running down their direction and blocking the parking space, forcing Kai to drag them down a road where the dumpsters laid, opening one up and chucking D.O in before diving in himself, buried in trash and rotten food.

‘Because I can’t have you running off on your own!’, Kai tries to defend his actions, but he himself didn’t really know why he, out of impulse, ran out in broad daylight without so much of a disguise.

‘You could’ve left me! I could’ve gone home!’

‘And leave us all behind?’

‘As if you need me anyway!’

‘How do you know that we don’t?!’

‘Kai, look at me. Just look at me. Do I look like I’m needed? Do I even look remotely useful?’, D.O gestures to all of him, glaring at the commander’s son, shoving further back into the metal walls of the dumpster, stepping over something wet and sticky, clambering up in an attempt to open the lid, freezing as he hears footsteps running pass them.

‘We still can’t have you running off. You still don’t have your powers back!’, Kai tries to argue, but D.O blocks his mouth with his hands as he looks between the crack of the lid opening, seeing dozens of soldiers piled up, driving his hovering cars and mini aircraft, his eyes landing on a new device he hasn’t seen before; hovering motorcycles.

‘Look, Kai, I’ll stall them for a bit, you go run to Baekhyun’s ship’, D.O looks through the gaps, seeing groups of soldiers walking pass, near them.

‘But-’

‘Just do it’, D.O raises his voice, pushing Kai back slightly, blocking him from anyone’s sight, his eyes scanning the blaring red lights emitting from every building, the holographic telecom of them booming their pictures, hovering scanners flying over the sidewalk. It was in this moment in which the rookie mechanic’s eyes scan the spinning machines which scan body heat, the soldier’s motorcycle, his eyes peering wide, curious and intrigued, his attention lost for a moment, fingers gripped hard on the cement walls, ‘I have a plan’

 

 

 

 

‘Why do you think Kai would be hiding for? He’d just survived the EXO’dus attack with just a scratch’, a soldier voices out the moment he turns a corner on his hovering motorcycle, turning the control button to auto-mode as he loads his sleeper gun, scanning the perimeter for any signs of the infamous alien.

‘Probably hiding that little pet of his’, another soldier comments, roaming around with bored eyes, preloading his sleeper gun, the one he uses especially to catch Kai since he’s been sent on babysitting duties before, he even got knocked down a couple of ranks when he lost Kai the one time when the boy was only thirteen years old.

‘It still smells kinda fishy’, the other soldier points out, noticing Kai’s tattered clothes through the life-size holographic, his intent eyes. He took a closer look at Kai’s scars, which was odd, from his intensive medical training course, it showed that some of Kai’s scars were clearly a few days old at most, skin patching up the bleeding tissues, but once he took a closer look – why did it look like he has fresh scars covered around his arms – no more than a day at least, ‘Something smells _really_ fishy…’

‘That’s probably me’, a voice from behind interrupts them, something hitting both soldier in the face, causing them to fly out of their hovering motorcycles, grazing their skin on the floor as they try to get back up, looking up to find two aliens waving at them, one holding a rotten fish, zooming past them, riding their motorcycles, ‘Sorry!’, one scream, his voice deep yet subtle.

‘Kid! That was awesome!’, Kai screams, laughing as he turns around, watching the pair of soldiers attempting to run after them, Kai skidding the motorcycles in a circle, creating black marks on the road.

‘Shut up and don’t call me kid!’, D.O screams back, resetting the motorcycle to auto-mode, opening up its system and looking at the intricate wires with his mouth practically watering. They have the wolf chip connecting over the extreme line which runs through the antigravitational database that allows not only for the machine to hover above ground without the need of attached wheels but for the ability to let the rider control it with no steers, just a touch of their palm, ‘This is awesome’, he whispers, brushing his fingers over the smooth covering of the wires, already fuming with excitement as he rips it apart and puts it back together again, connecting and reconnecting, hands almost orchestrating a musical, his motorcycle stopping to a halt as soon a she unplugs the main power system, allowing himself to be left behind as Kai continues to glide over the roads, skipping past dozens of soldiers which amasses behind him in a scurrying fleet, ‘Right… Let’s do this’, D.O whispers to himself, pulling out the red socket and plugging it with his laser gun, recharging it as he waits for Kai to make a turn towards the open area to where Baekhyun’s ship laid low.

D.O let’s go of his laser gun which laid limp and useless on the floor, kicking off the spare pieces of metal, edging the motorcycle into his hands, heavy and painfully taller than D.O, the alien aims up at the sky, closing his eyes as he feels the metal vibrating against his skin, the laser beams travelling their way through the wires, firing up into a shaking mess.

D.O throws it up in the air with a struggle before running in the opposite direction.

‘Good luck guys’, he whispers as he hears the explosions of laser beams cutting through everything it touches, the corners of buildings, electronic billboards and unattended ship, causing a massive stir as Elyxion goes on full Red Alert, this time for destruction and attack, forcing all soldiers to retreat from their current duties in finding Kai and directing them straight into the middle of the city, far away from Baekhyun’s ship.

 

 

 

 

‘Kai, Kai’s coming! Come on, open the ship!’, Sehun exclaims as he watches the alien gliding towards them, Sehun pushing the entrance gates to let Kai in, the boy skidding out of the machine, running for his life inside the chambers of Baekhyun’s ship, breathlessly panting with his skin filling with new scars to cover the old one, ‘Kai, Kai, are you okay?’, Sehun checks up on him, scraping the dirt on Kai’s face, looking around for any serious damage, but like always, Kai seemed perfectly intact.

‘Where’s D.O?’, Suho looks around, the entrance gates still wide open, his eyes falling on the fallen and broken motorcycle which Kai had abandoned by the entrance, but nothing followed it, no second motorcycle, not even a running alien, ‘Where is D.O?!’, he asks again, this time his voice raised and stern as he pulls Sehun off Kai, his hands grabbing the remains of Kai’s collar, eyes glaring, fuming with fury, ‘Where’s the boy?’

‘I – I don’t know… He was right behind me… I swear…’, Kai breathes out, looking pass Suho’s furious gaze and looking out between the gaps of the door, waiting for D.O to appear from the horizon, ‘Where is he?’

‘We can’t wait for him, we need to leave’, Baekhyun alerts them, strapping himself on the main pilot seat, exLLE by his side, his hands reaching out to press the all close security gates, reloading his invisibility shield.

‘What are you? Insane? D.O is still out there!’, Suho screams from behind, sprinting to the front as eh stops Baekhyun from fully shutting all gates, the entrance gates still wide open, his eyes never leaving it.

‘We’re not going to make it out if we search for him!’

‘But we can’t leave him!’

‘We haven’t got a choice!’, Baekhyun declares, pushing Seho out of the way, emitting light from his hands which flashed all over his control panels, blinding everyone but himself from seeing the stirring wheel, Baekhyun punching the button to lock all doors, Suho screaming his name as the rest of the group hears the chattering of the gate doors closing.

‘No!’, Suho screams, seeing the entrance doors closing, but this time, it wasn’t the rusting doors painted in shredded yellow which Suho was looking it. It was the flash of silver, newly painted and gloss just for this mission, his arms reached out in an attempt to grab his crewmate, the last thing he saw was the flaring eyes, terrified and alone.

‘Suho, no! Come back here!’, Xiumin intervenes, stopping the ex-captain from escaping the ship, holding onto him and gripping him down as he continues to scream, calling out a name that was clearly not D.O’s, his breath hitched and screams grew louder, Baekhyun’s mind in a blur as he continues to emit light from everywhere, his hands shakily lifting the stirring wheel up, lifting the ship as a whole and preparing for departure, his eyes scanning the outer perimeter of the area, with a quick search to find a small alien, his eyes wavering back and forth. He couldn’t find him. He closes his eyes as he presses the lightyear speed emission, hearing Suho’s screams at the back.

‘Lay! Come back! No!’

The ship disappears from Elyxion’s sight.

 

 

 

 

The galaxy is empty, a clear dark mist of matter and isolation, far from any civilisation from a million-mile radius. But in the midst of the dark emptiness, a ship floats by, rusted and bent, scratched and scarred, claw marks running along the sides, ends which bent and broken over time, the yellow paint almost all gone.

Six aliens sat in silence, no word left their lips and no one dared to start a conversation. Baekhyun continued to look out in the far horizon, although he knew nothing was coming ahead; he had purposefully flown them straight into the outer layer of the abyss, the ultimate darkness which separates life from the unknown. Just one missed turn and they’d straight into the black hole and into the unknown; death.

‘Where the hell are we?’, Xiumin looks around, Baekhyun’s tracker turned off along with most of the shield, machine guns turned off and refuelling, ‘I said where are we?’

‘In the outer layers of the galaxy’

‘You’re sending us to the black hole? Are you insane?!’

‘I’m balancing us on the fence! We are not going to get sucked into the Abyss. I’m not going to let that happen’, Baekhyun informs the worrying Rabbi, Xiumin’s brows furrowed as he recalls the powerful force of the Black Hole, sucking everything in and leaving everyone dead. He knew too much of the consequences of what happens when a ship gets lost in the outer layers of the galaxy.

‘Oh great, what are you? Some kind of magical pilot? The abyss is unstable and the black hole is too powerful to run away from!’

‘Which is why we’re at the edge and not out of the perimeter!’, Baekhyun argues, breathing heavy as Xiumin’s voice continues to pierce through his mind, ‘I know what I’m fucking doing because I’ve been here before. Now shut the fuck up and let me think!’, Baekhyun screams, silencing the room once more, Xiumin huffing in frustration as his beloved bag down, head hitting the table.

‘D.O… We just let him…’, Suho whispers, more to himself as his eyes continue to glue itself on the closed door in the hopes that maybe it might open, maybe D.O made it and he’s just outside of the ship…

This has happened before for Suho. Waiting and waiting yet not running out to save his crewmate. It had happened way too vividly…

Sehun continues to stare out into the darkness, his eyes gleaming out on the stars which flickered like a candlelight. They must really be far away for him to see the stars and planets as nothing more than little speck of lights on the horizon. He’s never been this far out from the galaxy before.

‘Lay’, Chanyeol whispers, voice broken down to the monotonous voice he has when he’s running out of fuel, his eyes scanning pass databases, millions of them, ‘Who is Lay?’, the questions to nobody, scanning the different files of alien he had scanned throughout the years, whether it was meeting them in person or finding an old microchip on the floor of EXO’dus in which he so curiously scanned – some government officials were rather clumsy.

Everyone turns to Suho, who continues to look out at the gates, his back leaning down on the chair and his eyes never blinking. Everyone was curious as to why Suho had shouted someone else’s name all of a sudden, their eyes peering softly as they observe the ex-captain sighing, closing his eyes and finally peering away from the gates and onto the floor, the soft humming of the ship’s engine the only noise being heard. It seems as though everyone was waiting for his reply.

‘He was my right-hand man’, Suho whispers, head still hung low, eyes looking at his shoes, ‘Dr Lay of Sector 10. He was the greatest healer, the best yet actually. I never lost a crew member because of him. He kept everyone safe… He kept everyone sane… Including me…’, Chen looks up, observing the ex-captain. He remembered the story, the gossip which flowed around his section during the time when he was just a mere soldier. Captain Suho of the Boomerang had failed their first and last mission, no surviving members but the captain himself. It was the shock of the century.

‘What happened?’, Sehun asks, this time peering away from the window and towards Suho.

‘Our mission was to simply deport LOEY back from Earth and to Elyxion as soon as possible, but the war between the Red Force and the security perimeter over the milky way had just started, we got hit, badly. We never even made it save Professor LOEY…’

‘You were the crew that was supposed to save him?’, She glances, his eyes widening as he takes a closer look at Suho.

‘Yeah… When I lost all of my members, I stirred my ship down to Earth in hope that LOEY was still alive, in hopes that my crew members died for nothing but…’

‘But what?’

‘All he found was me’, Chanyeol’s voice interrupts, everyone’s gaze slowly shifting from Suho to the cyborg sitting on the floor, his knees up as he wraps his arm around himself, ‘Suho found me in the wreck and brought me back to his ship once he found LOEY’s mark on me, kept asking where he was… But I couldn’t remember anything… I couldn’t even remember him’, Chanyeol looks down, Baekhyun’s eyes gazing worryingly over the cyborg whose hands begin to twitch uncontrollably.

‘With all that said and done, it was a failed mission. I lost our target, I lost the mission and I lost my members’, Suho breathes out, ‘I vowed never to lose another one again…’

Kai look uncomfortably at Suho, he can feel Chen’s piercing hot gaze from behind, the General probably shooting daggers at him. In defeat, Kai is the first to stand up, leaving the tensed room, opening the compartment and separating himself from everyone else. He could have sworn D.O was right beside him, in the motorcycle and on their way to Baekhyun’s. He could’ve sworn he felt D.O smile at him. But for the life of him, he should’ve just turned around just in case.

‘Because of you, D.O’s gone’, a familiarly painful voice cracks at his skin from behind. Kai didn’t need to turn around to know who it is, ‘Because of you, an innocent alien is dead’

‘We don’t know if he’s dead’

‘He might as well be!’, Chen shouts at him, punching the metal shelves and shaking the compartment in anger, his eyes fuming as he takes a look at Kai. All he’s been doing is looking at Kai and every time he does, something always goes wrong, ‘Why is it, whenever anyone tries to go near you, they end up in a pile of shit?’

‘It’s not my fault, okay? I’m cursed!’

‘You’re not cursed, you’re stupid! That’s what you are! You got caught, in the middle of Elyxion, where every soldier and their mother _lives._ You were probably canoodling in a club or a brothel somewhere, weren’t you? Couldn’t keep it in your fucking pants now…’

‘It’s not my fault! I didn’t ask to go to Elyxion!’

‘But you asked to go to EXO’dus and they’re now both in a pile of rubble, Elyxion is in a hot mess and we’ve just lost D.O. What more damage are you going to do before you fix yourself up?’

‘Why are you screaming at me for? You’re not my dad!’

‘Exactly! And I’m not your family! So why is it I’m always out here to clean _your_ mess?! My powers are taken away from me, I was pronounced _dead_ and I might have well had my post taken away from me too… Probably to be given to you…’ Chen whines, perking up Kai who had started to build up the anger and frustration, staring back at Chen.

‘Is that what this is? Scared that he might give back the post to me? What, you think I want it back? After all the years of doing fucking nothing just so I can get rid of that _stupid_ post off me!’, Kai gritted his teeth, stomping towards Chen, ‘Why did you think I so easily gave it to you in the first place?’

‘Because you’re a useless, pathetic, sad excuse for a-’

‘I persuaded my dad to pick you’

‘Huh?’, this stops Chen from his speech, his expression changing from anger to one of confusion, ‘What did you say?’

‘He’s had enough of me and he was going to throw me out of the army anyway. He was already planning for my dismissal. He was already going to get rid of me, even before he knew you’re name. I chose you and told my dad that the person he should be training was _you’,_ Kai screams, ‘I heard so much about you it was driving me insane but once I saw you, in the battlefield, I knew you could do my job better than I ever could, so if my dad was going to disown me, he might as well pick the perfect person to replace my spot next to him’

‘But…’

‘So, no Chen. I may not be the perfect soldier or the perfect alien, but because of me, you’re second in command’, Kai whispers, his tone still as aggressive as when he was shouting, ‘So be fucking grateful at least’, he breathes out, pushing past Chen and opening the door, falling to the ground as a herd of aliens’ lands on him due to leaning on the door, trying to hear the argument between the two.

‘Haha, we were just trying to fix the door… Haha, it’s gone a little rusty there, hasn’t it?’, Sehun chuckles, coughing as he tries to get off Kai, scratching his head and pushing Chanyeol out of the way so he tries to get up. Trials of ‘yeah’ and agreement came from the other aliens who had to settle with that sad excuse of a story, nodding their heads eagerly.

‘What? I thought we were listening in on Chen and Kai arguing?’, Chanyeol disrupts them, his eyes twitching as he looks between Kai and the rest of the aliens in confusion, giving everyone away.

‘You pathetic piece of junk’, Baekhyun hisses, reaching his arm out to hit Chanyeol in the head, walking back to his seat as Kai gave them all a death glare.

 

 

 

 

‘Hey, mind moving that to the side for a bit’, Xiumin whispers, tapping his finger on the table is able to gain Chen’s attention who was too indulged in his daydream to notice the Rabbi holding a stack of books, waiting for Chen to move his drink to make room for it.

‘Oh, right… Sorry’, Chen broke his silence, drinking the last of his drink before setting it down on the floor, watching Xiumin open three books at a time, typing on his pad, the screen cracked but still useful as Xiumin types away, reading, rereading the same page over and over again, Chen glancing in curiosity how an EXO’rdium Rabbi could take hours to read and translate one page in a thousand-page book.

‘If you’re really curious, please just ask, don’t just look at me. It’s really distracting’, Xiumin calls out, his eyes still glued onto the book in front of him as he licks his finger, turning the page and seeing splurges of ink and wet patches which blocks the text from being seen – sighing in defeat – his squints his eyes and hopes to make out at least pieces of words he can form a sentence.

‘Oh… Right’, Chen mutters, coughing as he tries to fix his stature, straightening his back and looking around the room, glancing at a sleeping Sehun leaning on Chanyeol, who’s eyes continued to twitch as he drinks his flask of diesel, he turns his glance back at Xiumin, the EXO’rdium Rabbi who Chen didn’t even give a second glance to at first, but now that they were stuck with each other for who knows how long, Chen has no choice but to notice the little quirks from the alien, ‘Does it really take you an hour to read a page?’, he asks, leaning his arms on the little space available on the table.

‘Try reading one paragraph that’s written in four different languages’, Xiumin mutters, lifted up the old rusted book, burnt on the edges, the General’s eyes scanning the page, different symbols amounting to a language Chen doesn’t even recognise.

‘What the… Why is each sentence written in a different language?’, Chen’s eyes sparked in curiosity, his hand reached out, fingers touching the rough patches of paper, dents of where the pen was pressed as the writer wrote strictly on the page.

‘It’s an irony’, Xiumin responds, answer vague and not enough for Chen who continues to look at the peculiar book – to him, it didn’t seem like a book – more like a diary; a journal with a plain black front cover along with the unknowing prints of written text along with printed, ‘It’s a book that doesn’t want to be read’, Xiumin continues his answer once he sees the wavering confusion flash across Chen’s face, chuckling as the alien in front of him gave him an odd expression.

‘And what’s the point of a book if it doesn’t want to be read?’

‘What’s the point of a General if he’s not in the front line?’, Xiumin replies, earning him yet another odd expression from the General, this time more divisively angry than the previous. Chen didn’t want to express anymore of his feelings in the matter, sensing that his argument with Kai about it was enough to last him a couple of days of not acting like what a General should be doing. From now on, he was just going to be Chen, plain old soldier Chen like the old times.

‘What’s this?’, plain old soldier Chen asks, reaching out to grab a book, thinner than what Xiumin was holding, crispy clean and small, a silver binding keeping the pages together, curves of silver forming a tree at the front.

‘I… Have no idea…’, Xiumin squints his eyes, looking at the unfamiliar book. He must’ve picked it up when he was rushing out the library – oh well – seems like the Elyxion central library is going to have a book missing.

‘Tree of life, collections of myths and legends… It must be an actual novel!’, Chen perks up, opening up the book and reading the first line.

‘I didn’t know you like reading…’, Xiumin observes the General as the alien sinks in his seat, his already scanning the words printed on the paper. It seemed rather odd to see an action man like Chen sitting down to read a book, Xiumin felt rather fuzzy seeing the contrasting image. There’s nothing more good looking than a man seeking knowledge.

‘How did you think I waste my time during ship journeys’, Chen mentions, flipping the page to find that it wasn’t a novel or a collection of stories like how he had hoped, but a file, a list of all the beliefs, the folklore and stories which had been collected during the years – conspiracies of events.

_When the skies and the grounds were one..._

 

__


	7. What U Do?

**What U Do?**

 

**_playlist seven:[what u do?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Honi3l7T4E)_ **

 

* * *

 

Baekhyun sits by the front of the ship, on his main pilot seat as always, exLLE prolonging her sleep on the lap of a certain cyborg which has started gaining her trust once the wild cat smelts a bit of her owner’s scent on him. The ship is silent, an atmosphere which had started to occur ever since the disappearance of D.O, Kai avoiding Suho at all cost, still guilty of the fact that he was the reason for the sudden ruckus, his pained scars and wounds still open and unattended, sitting on the floor as he stares out of the window, counting the stars on the horizon. The fumes from his ships continue to make odd noises, forcing the pilot and co-pilot to cooperate quietly for once, busying themselves in repairing the ship, stuck in motion without much entertainment to fill the silences in between.

‘Baekhyun…’

‘Oh… Hey Suho’, Baekhyun straighten up from his seat, flinching at the sudden break in silence, seeing Suho sitting on the co-pilot seat, leaning his elbows on his knees as he looks up at Baekhyun.

‘Can you do me a favour?’, the ex-captain whispers, his eyes scanning around Baekhyun’s control panel. He can see the busting lights and opening buttons, rusting metal and disallowed wires which had started coming out. Baekhyun’s ship was starting to look like a mess.

‘What is it?’

‘Can I use my radio here?’, Suho didn’t want to ask for such a favour, especially now that he knew from the interior that Baekhyun’s ship was not in the perfect condition it was once when they were all back in EXO’dus.

‘Your radio? Why not use mine? Who do you want to contact?’, Baekhyun asks, slightly shifting from his seat as he reaches his hand out, wiping the crumbs which had made their way on the steering set, readjusting the wires as his hands tried to pull out an odd object, oblong with speakers by its ends.

‘No, I need to use my radio…’, Suho tries to interrupt as Baekhyun continued to tug at the radio which was obviously stuck, ‘I need to contact someone from Planet Earth…’

‘Planet Earth?’, Baekhyun freezes, his eyes shifting to Suho, ‘Why do you need to contact Planet Earth?’

‘I… Just want to make sure of something’

 

 

 

 

‘Planet Earth?! Are we going to contact Planet Earth? Right Now?’, Sehun excitedly pushed pass Kai and Chanyeol, looking over as he leans on Baekhyun, his eyes peering as he watches the pair readjust Baekhyun’s radio, unplugging and logging wires, shutting down the satellite system, Baekhyun focusing on the strength of his ship’s signals.

‘Sehun, sit still, we’re busy right now’, Baekhyun whines, pushing the overly active soldier, seeing Sehun’s long legs making its way over to the other side to where Suho is, arms resting on his shoulders as he watches with intent eyes Suho trying to figure out which wire he needs to connect with the last plug in the radio he recently purchased from Edge’s Corner, his eyes observing the small bulb ejected by the end of the radio – it wasn’t lighting up.

‘Is there someone from our base living on Earth? Can we visit it?’

‘This dude does not shut up, doesn’t he?’, Baekhyun whines, turning his head to see Sehun who was more or less jumping in joy, Kai leaning down next to Chanyeol with exLLE’s tail wrapping around his thigh, perking up his head to see the commotion.

‘Who knows. That boy has been obsessed with everything Earth related, it’s been bugging me’, Chen cracks out his voice, his hand still flicking through a book he stole off Xiumin’s stash, skimming through the pages in boredom, rolling his eyes as he reads the same information over again but written in different ways.

‘Maybe he’s half human too?’, Chanyeol perks up, scanning his database to check Sehun’s profile, falling upon the alien’s EXO’rdium resume which he stumbled upon, checking his backgrounds only to sigh in a heavy defeat, ‘No… Pure alien’, exLLE continued to curl herself around the cyborg, blocking him from standing up to peer at the odd device which had started, the rest of them began to stir to their feet once Suho twisted the antenna, hearing the perks of electrons from the wires.

Kai, who was about to stand behind Suho takes a step back, scattering a little as Chen pushes pass him, eyes avoiding and body language awkward. It’s been odd, seeing the two most vocal aliens shutting their lips at the sight of each other. Rather odd indeed now that Chen refuses to bat an eye at Kai, someone who he won’t take his eyes off previously. Kai swiftly goes back to his space next to Chanyeol, eyes still peering out rather curiously.

‘Now, we’re literally in the middle of nowhere, so I have no idea if this will pick up anything so…’, Baekhyun informs, switching on the sterilising, balancing out the signal waves as he tries to aim for a good shot out, eyes observing the static as he lets Suho tap in a message, ‘Any particular coordinates you want?’

‘No’

‘So, you just want to pierce in a random message on Earth to no one in particular?’

‘Yeah’

‘Any explanation why?’

‘I just wanna check something’

‘Check what?’

‘If someone’s still out there’, Suho’s vague respond didn’t answer anything, but his expression did, albeit small, the twinge of sadness with a mixture of hope fills the ex-captain’s face, his eyes piercing down at the radio as if it was his last call, last shot.

‘Alright then. Write your message now’, Baekhyun looks at him, pressing his radio to connect with Suho’s.

It beeps.

They wait. Sehun’s eyes glistening at the bleeping machine, checking Baekhyun’s intercom for any signs of connection, communication on Earth.

‘Someone on Earth’, Chanyeol utters to himself, his database scanning to see if there are any alien forms on Earth, his eyes twitching red as he zooms in.

The radio stops beeping.

Chanyeol breaks down.

‘Chanyeol? Robot guy? You okay?’, Kai questions the moment he senses Chanyeol’s head landing on his shoulder suddenly, eyes closed and hands twitching, ‘Chanyeol?’

‘What’s going on?’, Xiumin responds to the rising voice of Kai, the commander’s son holding onto Chanyeol, shaking him vigorously.

‘It’s Chanyeol, the dude’s malfunctioned again’, Kai calls out, reaching out his hand, gesturing it for Xiumin to pass the flask of diesel, ‘This guy’, Kai sighs, softly slapping Chanyeol, moving his head slightly, exLLE perking up at the commotion, making soft noises as she looks up with worried eyes, ‘Chanyeol, wake up’, Kai whispers, pulling up the flask as he pours it on Chanyeol’s parted lips, hoping the cyborg can taste the fuel.

The beeping stops.

Chanyeol’s eyes open, one eye glistening red.

‘Zhang Yixing’

 

 

 

 

 

‘What the hell is going on here?’, Mr Wang bellows, slamming out his office as he peers at his employees, more so, their computer.

‘All system’s done sir, we don’t know what’s happening’, his secretary runs forward, heels tapping against the wooden floors.

‘Well, tell me when it’s going to get fixed’, he exclaims, looking down at his phone, scrolling through his e-mails and messages, dozens of shareholders and investors already up on his ass since all their system broke down five minutes ago.

‘I – I don’t know sir-’

‘What do you mean you don’t know? We are a goddamn bank for Christ’s sakes. How can our systems break down?!’

‘Sir…’, one of his employees came rushing in from the seventeenth floor, phone in hand, ‘It’s not just us’, he informs Mr Wang, the tie around his collar loosened.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Every system has gone down from a 50-mile radius is down’

‘What?!’

Zhang Yixing types away, his eyes glistening with worry as he tries to fix the broken system from his computer – the only machine that hadn’t broken down. He scans the room, looking around to see if anyone has noticed his desk, sighing in relief once his colleagues stand up, walking around and out of the floor, trying to get signal on their phones and other devices, confused as to why every single device, from their large data system to their small music players were all broken down.

_Is anyone out there?_

The letters type hastily on Yixing’s computer, his eyes widening as the characters were not Chinese, not even English. It wasn’t human, but he understood every word of it, his eyes scanning over the letters he hadn’t seen in years.

_Please respond if you get this message. Is anyone out there._

Who is trying to contact Earth? Was it important that they’d break down and paralyse every satellite orbiting it? And how did they know to contact him?

_This is Captain Suho of the Boomerang. If anyone is still alive, please respond now._

‘Captain Suho…’, he whispers, reading the words which had typed by itself on his computer, his fingers freezing at the sight of an old friend’s name; his very own captain, ‘You’re alive?’

 

 

 

 

Nothing. Suho is getting nothing. He taps on the radio once again, sending a Morse code which will hopefully translate to a native language on Earth.

‘What’s happening?’, Sehun asks curiously, looking over at the radio, waiting for it to move or start making a noise, but the device is still.

‘No one’s out there’, Suho sighs, in defeat, as he looks down on the device, his previous expression long gone, now his eyes are empty, lips frowned, ‘Nothing’s happening because no one is there to respond’, Suho, with his last glimmer of hope, reaches his fingers out to turn off the radio, but he’s stopped with the sudden scream from Chanyeol, screeching more like, the rest of the group twitching in pain as they turn to Chanyeol.

‘What the hell Chanyeol?’, Kai whines, pushing the cyborg off him, blocking his ears from the loud noise, exLLE running off to her owner in fright.

‘Zhang… Yixing…’, he whines out, coughing out something odd as his red eye shines out, forming some kind of shape which reflects straight onto the walls of Baekhyun’s ship, red and obscure, ‘He’s… Trying…’, Chanyeol whines out in pain as he forces himself to direct all of Suho’s message which flies around the wave signals, directing straight to a person, someone who was busy typing away.

‘Who the hell is Zhang Yixing?’, Kai mutters, bending down to finally aid the pained cyborg, lifting him up to sit down on a proper seat, a flask of diesel already opened and forcing Chanyeol to sip a bit.

The radio beeps again.

‘Hello?’, a voice comes from the other side, startling the whole group, shifting their gaze from Chanyeol and back to the radio which rests on Suho’s hands, ‘Hello?’

‘Hello?!’, Suho shouts in surprise, eager to know who the voice belongs to, ‘Hello, this is Captain Suho of the Boomerang. Please respond with your name and your post…’, Suho stutters out, too surprise to form any more sentences, his hands gripped tightly on the radio. There was silence which followed his respond, the rasping static of the radio blaring in, no voice coming in.

‘Why aren’t they responding?’, Sehun continues to ask, his eyes glaring down on the radio, just as eager as Suho. He hasn’t heard of anyone being forced down on Earth ever since the failed mission three years ago. No one dared to send their troops down the Milky Way. So, who was residing on Earth?

‘This is Lay of sector 10’

Suho freezes.

‘Lay?’, he calls out, just to make sure he heard it right. Lay? His right hand was alive? All this time he was alive?

‘Yes, Captain’, the moment of silence came once again, rushing down and filling the ship with odd tension, somewhat hopeful and joyous as they stare at Suho.

‘You’re alive?’, Suho comments, sniffing as he tries to shed away the tears which had threatened to leave the brim of his eyes.

‘So are you’, the voice responds.

‘Yes, I am’, Suho smiles, his teeth showing as he hangs his head low, leaning on the radio as if it was his saviour, for a moment, it was.

‘Yes, I’m glad to see that you’re safe too. But I think we need to end our communication short. You’re causing quite a stir on Earth and it won’t be long till the humans begin to question things’, Lay informs the crew, ‘I don’t know how you’re doing all this, but it needs to end, now’, Baekhyun looks at his control panels, readjusting his buttons and finding nothing wrong with it.

‘I don’t understand, it shouldn’t be affecting anything, now that you’ve responded, the other signals should be gone by now’, Baekhyun whispers, rechecking his control buttons, rewiring his radio with Suho’s, just in case something went wrong during the setup.

‘I’m afraid the signals are still going haywire and it's causing quite a stir’

‘Chanyeol!’, Kai screams the moment Chanyeol pushes him away, kneeling to the ground as he throws up something green and something disgusting once Kai took a closer look, gagging at the sight of vomit, ‘What is wrong with you?’, he whines, wanting to go over and comfort the sick cyborg, but not wanting to go near to the substance which pools around him.

‘Someone… Please… Turn me off…’, he pleads, feeling his human part of him churning. He rechecks and by all means, he all his database and system were intact, flowing properly, so this surely must be his human side.

‘Oh, for MAMA’s sake’, Baekhyun whispers, abandoning the control panels and holding his breath as he steps over the mess by Chanyeol, bending down to lift the cyborg’s shirt, eyes landing on the reset buttons by his lower left torso, scanning for a reset button, a small red button by the middle of the other plain grey controllers perched up, ‘There you go, buddy,’, he strokes Chanyeol’s hair as his eyes close, head landing on Baekhyun’s arms, ‘Kai, help me out here’

‘Thanks’, Lay breaks the tension.

‘Thanks for what?’, Suho responds, switching over on Baekhyun’s seat, readjusting the strength of the signal, trying to get rid of the static.

‘Didn’t you just turn off the signals? Everything is up and running now’, what? Suho looks at Chen and Xiumin in confusion. No one turned anything off. Xiumin looks at Chanyeol, laying on the battered mattress on the floor, Baekhyun handing Kai a mop and forcing him to clean up the mess, being followed by Kai’s whining, throwing the mop right back to Baekhyun.

‘Chanyeol must’ve done it’, Xiumin whispers, his eyes bright with curiosity.

‘How?’, Sehun, being the youngest and most confused, continues to ask questions upon questions, not really getting any answers at all.

‘He’s a LOEY product. Professor LOEY must have really given it his all trying to make something out of Chanyeol’, Chen adds onto Xiumin’s presumptions, every eye now suspiciously looking over the cyborg who has done things close to impossible with a malfunctioning brain, ‘LOEY must have…’

‘LOEY?’, Lay’s voice, now raised and much clearer.

‘Yeah, I sort of picked up one of LOEY’s last product when I went down on Earth’

‘You went to Earth?!’

‘During our mission. I made sure to land on Earth, to see if I could save LOEY and to make sure if…’, Suho pauses for a moment, ‘To make sure if anyone of you made it out alive and landed on Earth…’

‘You came down for us?’

‘It was in vain. All I found was one of LOEY’s cyborg running around half naked and looking for something he doesn’t remember’, Suho sighs, recalling the time he met Chanyeol for the first time, hair messy and bright blue, brighter than the hair he was sporting now, torso stitched carelessly, the scars can still be seen even now. For one of LOEY’s products, he was surely poorly made, but Suho took him in any way because he knew Chanyeol would die if he left him, ‘But… Lay… How are you on Earth now? How did you even survive? How did I not find you?’, Suho was now burning with questions, the atmosphere shifting from joyous to absolute confusion.

‘I found out that LOEY was based on an area called England. I landed in an area called China. I found out later on that the two areas are breached a few thousand miles away from each other. That’s probably why you couldn’t find me’

‘But… Lay… You could’ve reported to me. I would’ve come to you’

‘I thought you were dead’

‘Then report to anyone. They would never just leave you, their best doctor, stranded on Earth!’, Suho raises his voice, more frustration leaking through him as his reprised sorrow and anger.

‘I didn’t want to come back!’, Lay shouts back at Suho, his voice just as angry and frustrated, ‘I didn’t want to come back only to be forced to go through the same situation. I’ve had enough! All this fighting, missions upon missions. I couldn’t do it anymore. Human life is much simpler’

‘So, you’re just going to stay on Earth? By yourself?’

‘I’ve made quite a few friends here, I even have a job’

‘You’re still a doctor?’

‘No, I work in an office, for a bank’

‘What the hell is a bank?’, Suho is more than angry right now, he’s frustrated, which was not the first feeling he’d thought of once he finds out his best friend is still alive.

‘Captain Suho, please keep in mind that I cannot go back to you if that was your intent of communicating with Earth. I’ve found my place here and I find it much better than what I was doing for the past couple of decades with EXO’rdium’, Lay complies, each word tearing down the ex-captain, his thoughts all a blur.

‘But…’, Suho breathes out, still confused at the outcome, not knowing how to approach or even end the conversation. Lay was gone. This very conversation was a confirmation of that. That mission killed more than just LOEY, it killed everyone else.

‘Suho, forget it. You found out that your friend is alive, we might as well stop the conversation and plan something that might actually help us to defeat the Red Force’, Chen was the first to break the tension, patting Suho’s back as he guides Xiumin and Sehun away from the front, turning around to find that Kai was mopping the floor with a grimace on his face, cursing at Baekhyun who continues to care for the unconscious cyborg, giving Kai the finger the moment the tanned alien threw a wet rag at Baekhyun in protest.

‘Kai, let me help you out’, Sehun calls out, looking over to Suho one last time, eyes filled with concern before brushing it off, running off to see Kai practically throwing the mop to him to finish off the work, pacing out of the main room and into the compartment room, probably to scavenge for a new shirt since some of Chanyeol’s sick did get on his trousers.

‘Disgusting’, is the last thing he calls out before he slams the door closed.

‘Re – Red Force?’, Lay stutters, hearing a different voice from his phone which had gone down, the only thing it could do was receive the call from his former Captain.

‘Yeah…’, he hears Suho’s response as he sits down on the toilet, locked from everyone else, ‘I’ve kinda gotten myself in a bit of a pickle…’, Suho sighs and Lay can almost envision Suho combing his hair with his fingers.

‘What pickle?’

‘The Red Force has taken my powers’

‘What?’

‘And a few other aliens’, Lay tries to lower his voice after his surprised scream at Suho over the phone, just in case someone was walking past, ‘We’re trying to get it back’

‘So, you’re chasing the Red Force around the galaxy?’

‘Yeah, pretty much’

‘Captain Suho, the Red Force is an unknown element, we don’t even know if it’s an alien’

‘It sent down hundreds of killing machines and aircraft. I’m pretty sure it’s an alien, an army or one person, that’s still a question’

‘Captain Suho…’

‘Oh, and it’s no longer Captain Suho, unfortunately’

‘What?’

‘It’s just Suho nowadays’

‘You’re not… A Captain anymore?’

‘No, just a bartender now’, Suho pauses, too ashamed to even explain what exactly happened the moment he came back to EXO planet with an even emptier ship than when he left, ‘Anyway, since you’re happy where you are, I guess that'll be the last time we’ll be speaking’, Suho finalises the conversation, his heart heavier than when he was searching for his crewmate.

‘Oh… Okay…’

‘Till next time, Dr Lay’, Suho says his farewell, turning off the radio before Lay could give him a response, brushing his hair and finding a few pieces of rubble hidden inside.

‘That was eventful’, Baekhyun comments, pushing Suho off the main pilot’s seat as he sits back down, hair wet and sporting new clean clothes.

‘Where did you get those?’, Suho ask as he sees Baekhyun, skin clear from any mud and dried blood, the scars still fresh but tainted with ointments and plasters.

‘I live here’, Baekhyun comments, gesturing around his whole ship, ‘If you want to wash up, there’s a shower compartment and some spare clothes I scavenged. Try and find your size’

‘You scavenge clothes?’, Suho raises an eyebrow, judging the boy as he looks at the odd piece of clothing Baekhyun was wearing, noticing that he was sporting an Engineer overall, a pretty high ranked Engineer, ‘Why the fuck would you scavenge clothes for?’

‘Doesn’t hurt to take from someone who doesn’t need it anymore’, Baekhyun comments, taking a bite from one of the last fruit he found in his kitchen compartment, whining at Kai – because he knew it was that stupid alien – from finishing all of his stash of food which was supposed to last him three months.

‘And which Engineer wouldn’t need their uniform anymore?’

‘A dead one’, Suho looks back at Baekhyun with disgust in his eyes.

‘That is not scavenging. That’s grave digging’

‘Same thing’

‘Ergh’, Suho gives up, walking away from Baekhyun, grabbing a spare towel which hangs right atop of Chanyeol who sleeps soundlessly.

 

 

 

 

After the whole group has taken an initiative in taking a shower and changing their clothes so they at least look alive, Sehun has been given the task to clean the whole ship, wiping the walls and sweeping the floors to the sound to Xiumin teaching Chen about the history of EXO’rdium, much to everyone’s dismay, boring everyone. However, it did give some benefits as Kai gives up with listening to Xiumin, heading over down the ship’s main operating system, fixing up broken pipes and dented machines, grabbing a piece of radio from the compartment with hopes that it’ll drown out Xiumin’s loud speaking.

‘Shit, Baekhyun’s pumps are absolutely busted’, Kai mutters to himself, his voice slightly muffled by the oxygen mask he was wearing, leaning out of the ship as he listens to the soft music coming from the radio, screwing the pipes back together, getting rid of the screeching noises the ship makes whenever Baekhyun makes a turn, inspecting his work before moving onto the next one, climbing through the pipes to find another busted one.

‘You seem good doing that’, he hears a voice behind him, starling him for a moment, flashing his flashlight in the direction of the voice, seeing pale skin and squinting eyes trying to get away from the sudden light flashing on his face.

‘Dude, it’s just me’, Sehun whines, trying to get Kai to shut the light off, the wet rag resting on his shoulder as he wipes the windows, opening them to communicate to the Lieutenant busying away on the outskirts of the ship with his oxygen mask on his face.

‘What are you doing here?’, Kai asks, continuing to readjust the dent, kicking onto the metal to straighten them out.

‘Cleaning, what do you think?’, Sehun calls out, having to close the door once he feels the discomfort of oxygen escaping his lungs, waving the wet towel around.

‘An EXO’rdium soldier and a lieutenant cleaning and fixing a criminal scavenger’s ship in the outskirts of the Universe’, Kai comments, laughing more to himself as he looks at Sehun, his official clothes long gone, ‘What a picture’, he sighs, continuing to work at the pipes, screwing them tightly together, stopping for a moment as his thoughts reminds him of an alien who would love to be doing this instead of him, an actual mechanic who could fix Baekhyun’s tarnished ship. He hopes D.O was okay. That he was still alive and on his way to Planet 0.12. He promised himself, once he finds the Red Force, he’ll defeat it and give D.O’s powers back to him. It’s the least he can do.

 

 

 

 

‘X’han from the Lu clan of sector 07’, an alien official states, ticking something on his EXOphone, typing up a quick report before dragging the arrested alien into the next hovering jail cell, most likely to be taken into EXO Planet where they to do put in court. Elyxion is being reconstructed, a few hours before the explosion at the centre, soldiers teaming with the construction team, getting rid of the rubble and setting up workers to fix buildings already. Photos of Kai and his secret sidekick along with another set of photos of General Chen and a rookie soldier who has been identified by the name of Sehun also flashes up, both red letters ordering everyone to find them and bring them to EXO Planet immediately.

‘D.O Kyungsoo from Planet 0.12’, the alien official looks down on the small alien, looking back up at the photo of the very same alien holding hands with the Commander’s son, ‘ _You_ ’, he glares, growling at the boy as he lifts him up, thrusting him straight into the same jail cell as the previous criminal, ‘You’re in a lot of trouble, aren’t you, you little beast’, he continues to growl at the shaking alien, his skin filled with scars once a group of soldiers recognised him, chasing him before he can make it to a bus ship, dragging him straight into the main station with hands cuffed together by a neuron electric device which electrocutes him if he dares tries to break it.

‘So, you’re the kid that blew up the central?’, the alien next to him asks, laughing as the handcuffed alien glares at him.

‘Don’t call me kid’

 

 

 

 

Zhang Yixing fidgets in his seat, looking down at his uneaten meal as he continues to think about Suho’s last words to him.

‘The Red Force? Why would the Red Force want their powers?’, Yixing whispers to himself, earning a few looks from his colleagues as he continues to talk to himself. Yixing has always been an oddball to say the least, never knowing any pop culture references and always confused about everything, he couldn’t even speak Chinese sometimes and he was born here.

‘You alright buddy?’, one of his colleagues asks, tapping his shoulder and dragging him back to reality, the reality that he was in a human office, doing human things, having a human job and hanging out with human friends. He doesn’t need to worry about the Red Force, because to humans, it didn’t exist, so it shouldn’t exist for him too…

But goddamn it why does he feel like checking up on his captain just in case?

‘Right, my shift’s over, I guess I’ll better be going’, Yixing calls out, packing away his untouched dinner and swiftly putting the rest of his stuff away.

‘Wait, haven’t you finished Mr Wang’s reports?’

‘It’s been extended by a day because of the system breakdown’, Yixing explains, reminding everyone that all their work was extended due to the breakdown, earning another discussion about it, debates about how or why it had happened. There were sure to have a few conspiracy theories about this, Yixing was sure of it’, Well, I’ll see you around folks’, the waves, bowing to everyone, as usual, even bowing to his Juniors since he still didn’t know the rules of bowing and tends to forget who he should and shouldn’t bow to, opting to just bow to everyone instead.

‘That guy is so weird’, one of the comments, seeing Yixing practically run out of the floor, opting to use the stairs and run down to the ground floor from the thirteenth floor.

‘Yeah, but he means no harm’

Yixing continues to race out of the building, waving his hands for a taxi as he rushes to his house, a small house perched by the end of the city, almost two hours away from his workplace in the main city. He unlocks his phone, which to everyone else, might look like an ordinary iPhone X, but Yixing was still an alien and human’s technology was just lagging behind, so he added in his own tweaks, typing in his password and scrolling down to find the radio which connects with the old ship that’s buried underneath his house – well, part ship – a few pieces in the wreckage he found lying around which he decided to make an office out off, trying to see if he could connect with any life force just outside Earth’s satellite, even connecting to the alien channels, investing himself in a drama that was sometimes three hours long.

‘Connect with previous radio waves which was last sent to this phone’, Yixing commands his device, a small ping responding as it does what it commands, taking a few minutes before it connects to the main database in his office, saving Suho’s radio signals, ‘Now, what has the Red Force been doing’, Yixing quickly types into the search engines, connecting straight into EXO’s engine files, opening up videos and photos of the recent wreckage of EXO’dus and EX’act, soldiers lifting piles of rubble to fnd dead bodies everywhere, ‘Shit…’, he whispers, watching a particular video of soldiers lifting an air craft in EX’act to find a dead body of a girl, green scales of eyes hooded close, blood trickling down her stomach as she holds onto her laser gun.

_What’s happened whilst he was gone?_

 

 

 

 

‘Shit!’, D.O whines the third time he tried to break free from his cuffs, the jail cell being pulled by a ship on their way to EXO planet. D.O cannot get caught by Kai’s father.

‘Give up kid, that shit is unbreakable’, the other alien inside comments, lifting his hands up to find that he too had been handcuffed, the scars around his wrist showing proof that he had also tried getting these beastly things off.

‘Shut up and don’t call me a kid’, D.O whines, feeling the piercing pain boils his blood, making him land on the floor, flinching uncontrollably, ‘Fuck!’, he shouts, kicking the jail cell in frustration, looking down at the highly charged device wrapped around his hands.

‘Geesh, what d’you get in for anyway?’, the alien, D.O thinks his name is X’han, says, looking down at the innocent looking alien, probably a few years younger than he was, ‘Are you the Commander’s son’s little boy toy or something?’

‘No! I am not!’, D.O shouts back, continuously kicking the jail cell, shaking his hands, trying to break it off. If only he has his powers now, it would just be like bending a toothpick for him, ‘Goddamn it! Why am I so weak?!’, he shouts as he continues to pull and kick but gaining no results.

‘Probably because you look like you’ve never worked out a day in your life…’, X’han comments, laughing at the alien next to him. It’s been a long time since he’d seen such an energetic criminal, it was slightly refreshing, seeing as most of his prison mates were down and out drunkards or druggies who don’t even know their own names, ‘What’s your name by the way?’, he asks once the alien gives up and stops kicking at the strong metal.

‘D.O’, he whispers out, closing his eyes and leaning his head on the metal bars, ‘My name is D.O and I just wanna go home’

‘And where is home for you?’, D.O pauses, it should be an easy answer. Planet 0.12, a small planet which focuses on agriculture, just by the outskirts of EXO planets, ‘It was EXO’dus…’, he responds instead, gaining attentive ears as soon as he mentions the old Black Market.

‘EXO’dus?’, X’han whispers, looking at the alien up and down, ‘I knew someone must’ve survived the attack’, he whispers, smirking at D.O, ‘I came from there too’, D.O turns around, scanning the alien and seeing his tattered clothes and scarred arms.

‘No, you didn’t’, he responds, shaking his head, ‘No one’s survived at the attack’

‘You did’, X’han reminds him, ‘And so did I’, he whispers, smiling as he licks his lips, holding up his hands as he clicks his fingers.

‘What did you just do?’, D.O asks as the alien stands up, wiping the dust on his pants.

‘Look, a lot of the people here don’t believe that what happened in EXO’dus was an attack by the Red Force, so it’s the EXO’rdium Army’s fault if it decides to attack a much more ambitious place next time. I tried to warn them’

‘You… Came to Elyxion to warn them?’

‘What? You think I’m just a petty thief?’, X’han looks at D.O who looks at the ground, ‘I am offended’, X’han glares at D.O before laughing, patting the boy’s shoulder lightly, ‘just kidding kid. I’m actually a Brothel owner’, he chuckles, flicking his fingers forward. D.O oddly looks at his hand gestures, confused as to why the alien was suddenly doing that, but it seems as though he was doing it for a reason as he sees something shiny floating in the air, coming out from the ship dragging them forward.

‘Are those?’

‘Keys?’, X’han finishes his question, reaching his hand out to grab them, ‘Yeah’, he replies, hovering the piece of metal by the main keys above his handcuffs, forcing the handcuffs to open, dropping them to the ground as he reaches forward to undo D.O’s cuffs too.

‘How… Did you do that?’

‘Telekinetic’, X’han proudly shows off his powers, flicking the keys to float over to the locks of their cell, ordering it to unlock it by itself, twisting with a loud shriek before the doors open, inviting them out of the cell.

‘Wait… Where are you going? There are not ships around and we’re in the middle of a galactic highway’, D.O couldn’t even fathom the danger of going out without an oxygen pack, looking around to see that they also had to worry about EXO ships driving all around them.

‘No worries kid, I’m a Brothel owner. Generals and Soldiers are my best friends’, X’han comments, laughing as he lifts his hand out, waving it around and waiting for a moment, a ship hovering right by his side in a couple of minutes, shocking D.O.

‘Really?’, D.O looks up to see the EXO symbol etched onto the ship, ‘Are they all corrupt?’, D.O shuts his lips in disappointment, the clean image of the army long gone from his mind.

‘Not corrupt. Just a little horny’, X’han jokes, climbing into the ship which welcomed him so eagerly, being ignored by the rest of the ships who turned a blind eye on him, ‘You coming in or not?’

‘No, I need to go the other way’, D.O explains, looking for an exit turn in the galactic highway, somewhere where he can go to a planet with a bus ship.

‘You haven’t got a ship kid, you won’t go anywhere so you might as well drive with me. I’ll drop you off at the nearest bus ship’, X’han kindly offers, reaching his hands out. D.O almost accepts it, _almost._ But he remembers the rest of the group, probably out in hiding somewhere in the unknown and if they capture him, which they surely will once he sets foot in EXO Planet, they’re all done for.

‘I’ll make my own ship, thank you’, D.O declines his offer, waving him off with a simple goodbye and a smile.

‘Suit yourself kid’, X’han shrugs, shutting the door and giving D.O a salute before the ship drives forward, leaving him behind, alone in the jail cell.

‘Make my own ship… What ship’, D.O whines, instantly regretting it the moment X’han’s ride leaves him behind, ‘How the fuck am I supposed to get out now’, D.O complains, looking down to see if he can work with anything, only finding two handcuffs and a hovering jailcell.

_Wait._

This jail cell can hover by itself, all it needs is a controller to stir it. D.O walks ahead to see the chains which were wired to the cell. D.O turns around to grab one of the handcuffs, scanning the inside to find any loophole way in, breaking the locks and straightening it out, grabbing the metal keys on the floor, hovering it around the main electric system which sends out bolts of electricity, hitting it with the metal, causing a spark to form, burning the handcuffs which he throws onto the chains, burning it off the jailcell, looking around to see if anyone has seen him, but it seems as though most pilots were looking forward and minding their own business. Breathing out a few breathes, he feels the jailcell slowly due to the release of the chains, now he needs to start controlling it before he collides with an incoming ship, grabbing the other pair of handcuffs, he nit-picks the electric system, slowly yet successfully ejecting it from the cuffs, pasting it on one of the bars, breathing out softly as he closes his eyes.

‘This better fucking work’, he whines as he passes another electric system on the other side of the cell, trying to relax his mind and muscles, feeling the jailcell slow to a stop. Before a pilot noticed an unmoving jailcell, he reaches out both his arms, wrist hovering around the electric system, moving them to the left to spark movements which starts the electrons to start emitting electricity which moves to the notion of D.O’s hand movements as it tries to follow the skin, piercing the boy in punishment, but stirring the ship nonetheless, screaming in pain as he pushes forward, the jailcell also moving to the left towards one of the small exits which strays him away from EXO Planet and back to Elyxion where maybe he can find another exit which leads him to a much smaller planet.

‘What the fuck is that?’, a soldier points at a jailcell moving away from the side and straight into the exit.

‘I have no idea. Probably another criminal escaping their way to their death sentence’

‘Shouldn’t we go get them back?’

‘Don’t worry about it, they’ll probably get arrested again now that their two favourite hiding spots had been blown to smithereens’.

 

 

 

 

Yixing walks straight into his house, dropping his bags and going straight to the basement where everything was, his controllers, his signals and everything he can find, pressing the on button and being welcomed with lights and beeping noises coming from every corner as he sits down on his chair, typing the coordinates which his phone has given him once he searched where Suho’s signal waves were coming from, turning on his holographic video message, praying that whatever ship Suho was on, he’d also have a holographic system built in them.

‘Come on’, Yixing whispers, typing in his real name, Lay, into the system as he waits for Suho to pick it up.

The small bulb turns red.

‘Hello?’

‘Captain Suho!’

‘Sorry, but Suho’s sleeping right now, so I guess you’re stuck with me’, the voice at the other end whines, yawning as he was probably also sleeping, ‘Who is this?’

‘It’s um… It’s Lay…’

‘Oh, Suho’s little crush hiding on Planet Earth?’, the voice calls over, shocking Lay slightly.

‘No, I’m Lay, his former right-hand man’

‘Yeah, whatever you folks call it nowadays’, the voice whispers through, the static turning a bit louder, forcing Lay to readjust his signals, ‘Anyway, what do you want?’, the voice orders him, quite sternly.

‘Umm… Captain Suho was talking about the Red Force… I was wondering… Where he was and if he has had any contact with anyone in the perimeter of EXO Planet?’, Lay questions, clicking through the dozens of articles which have circulated in and around the galaxies.

‘No, we’re not in a position to have any contact with anyone right now’, the voice informs him, making Lay build up a file of information he can find, from videos to Rabbi’s thoughts and General’s plans of actions, hiding it in one file, encrypting it with safety passwords, just in case it gets lost in the middle of their connection.

‘Well, I’m going to be sending some files about the attack, you and Captain Suho will be informed with everything that has happened after the two attacks and hopefully that will help you find your next step’, Lay explains, preparing his computer to send the data files ahead, praying that the signal strength is enough to pass through the lightyear button, ‘I’ll be sending it in now, please tell me you have an intercom or a computer of any kind’

‘We’re not humans, we have a computer here’, the voice calls over, slightly cold as his ship was implied as a piece of junk with no computer.

‘Mind you, there are also computers down here on Earth now’, Lay defends the planet, wishing he could show the voice the phone he was holding onto, albeit he did tweak and make it slightly better, but at least the humans were catching up.

‘Yeah, whatever’, Lay can hear fingers tapping on a keyboard on the other end of his phone, ‘Yepp, I got them. Thanks, Mr Right-hand Man’, the voice echoes through.

‘Sure…’, Lay looks down on the phone, ‘So… Is Captain Suho awake now?’

Baekhyun looks behind him to where Suho was, trying to comb out the hot mess of hair which Chanyeol had sported after fainting and tumbling around the past three days without so much as a bath, not winking asleep as he tries to take care of the cyborg along with conversing to Chen and Xiumin about their next plan.

‘Sorry Mr Right-hand Man, Suho’s still sleeping’

‘Oh, okay’

Baekhyun hangs up the radio, not wanting to deal with Dr Lay at the very moment, his muscles tiring after sitting down for long hours, spinning his chair as he gets up, his hair damp but almost dry, a little curly since he didn’t bother to add any smoothing cream, walking pass the four in the main control room with him, in search of the Commander’s son and that stupid rookie soldier who is too hyperactive for his own good.

‘Where are those two idiots’, he whines, opening a spare room of his on the top deck of the ship, not finding any living sign of the two, having to go down three decks of compartments in search, ‘Kai? Sehun? Where are you two?’, Baekhyun shouts, rolling his eyes as he passes through the decks where the main engines, pumps and wires covering every wall and every section, Baekhyun almost giving up in search, but he steps on something, making him land on the floor, his wrist hitting the floor with him, the noise he made was halfway to sounding like a dead wildcat. Baekhyun gets up in search od whatever object he fell from, turning around to find two limp bodies, Sehun and Kai, sleeping beside each other, Kai’s measly jacket which he stole from Baekhyun’s drawers covering Sehun’s torso, a few of Sehun’s towels scrunched up to make a pillow for Kai as Sehun uses the tan skinned alien’s stomach as his pillow.

Baekhyun couldn’t be bothered to wake them up, he just glares at them, internally cursing them for making him search all over his ship for them only to land hands first on the bloody floor.

‘Let them sleep in this damp place, see if I care’, Baekhyun whispers to himself, leaving the two to sleep by themselves by the bottom deck of his ship.

****_  
  
_

 

**__ **

 


	8. 기억을 걷는 밤

#  기억을 걷는 밤

 

**_playlist eight:[walk on memories](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CBz0h0AAwM)_ **

 

* * *

 

Sehun wakes up, his eyes fluttering open and nose scrunched at the smell of gasoline and damp metal, his arms feeling something soft and warm breathing underneath him. His eyes finally focus, fixating on someone else sleeping on the floor with his, his tanned arms rounded in scars which will most likely be infected if not taken care of.

‘MAMA almighty, this alien doesn’t know how to take care of himself, doesn’t he?’, Sehun whispers, he lifted his head up to find Kai with his mouth open, snoring lightly as he continues to let sleep take over him. Sehun should probably wake him up and tell him to sleep in one of Baekhyun’s spare rooms in his ship, it looks like the week has taken a toll on his – it’s taken a toll on everyone – Sehun sighs, looking around the enclosed ship, knowing that they were in the middle of nowhere, away from his base, his home planet and his family which he hadn’t seen the moment he applied for the EXO’rdium post, which was nearly three years ago. Sehun has given everything up to be a soldier and now he truly has nothing. He doesn’t even feel useful even in a group of rag tags and delinquent.

Without saying much of a word, Sehun gets up, leaving the sleeping alien on the lower deck as he makes his way up to the main compartment where he concludes the rest of the group are, taking three flights of stairs and wondering where Baekhyun’s first-aid kit is – if he had any – opening the door to find the brightly lit room, his eyes gazing automatically to the pilot seats to find them both completely empty.

‘Sehun, where have you been?’, Suho’s voice calls over, directing Sehun at the back of the main control room, where a round table is set up, all of them sat around, including Chanyeol, fully awake and much brighter than before.

‘Oh, I was with Kai cleaning the ship’, Sehun explains, looking around as he steps forward, gaining a closer look of the open books, maps and written notes splurged everywhere on the table, Xiumin’s fingers gliding over the books as he writes something else on a piece of paper, ‘What’s going on here?’

‘Xiumin might be up to something’, Suho explains, pointing to the worn-out book that Sehun never noticed, burnt at the edges, the cover eroded but the title was still readable.

_RF._

‘RF?’, Sehun whispers, ‘Red Force?’, he looks to the side, noticing the binder of the old book, instantly recognising it, how could he not have recognised it? Three years’ worth of history classes along with his training told him all he needed to know about that book, ‘Where did you get that? That book is banned’, Sehun, his voice raising up, stern and controlled as if he was back to being a soldier talking to a criminal, his hands tensed and authoritative. Xiumin looks up and observes the way the soldier stood before him.

‘I got it from the one person who knows where to find things’, Sehun’s eyes land on Baekhyun.

‘Where did you get that?’

‘Someplace you don’t know. Now could you please relax, Xiumin’s been explaining us some things and I think it might make sense’

That was enough to set Sehun off, grabbing the book out of instinct and closing it to his side’

‘Sehun? Sehun, what the hell?’, Xiumin looks up at him and it seems as though their old roles were slowly coming back, Xiumin sitting up, straight and formal, his eyes serious and his body language professional, ‘I would advise you to give that book back’, his words flowed almost like water, relaxing and much to Sehun’s dismay, also authoritative. He was, in fact, an EXO’rdium Rabbi, a rather good one and a pretty important one last time Sehun checked. He’d been advising government officials for three whole generations now.

‘You’re a government official and you’re meddling with a banned book?’, Sehun glowers down at him, shaking his head and scrunching his nose in disgust.

‘Honey, what do you think government officials do?’, Baekhyun murmurs out, drinking a bottle of what seemed to be cheap alcohol he scavenged.

‘Shut up’, Sehun hisses at him.

‘Sehun, calm down, Baekhyun has a point’, Xiumin whispers, this time calmer, a little softer in his voice as he tries to get his way around a furious soldier. He’s done this way too many times with raging politicians and undecisive governors, so dealing with a young soldier was far below Xiumin’s expertise.

‘What are you talking about? You’re supposed to keep the peace by implying the rules, that’s why we have them’, the rest of the aliens sat around the table looks at Sehun, and for the first time since they met, they really looked at him, up and down, observing and reading his expression.

He’s a rookie soldier.

He hasn’t experienced or felt the realism of what being part of the EXO’ridium army or EXO government has felt like. He hasn’t seen the corruption of the chaos it ensues. He hasn’t seen anyone close to him die in the name of the so-called rules that were supposed to protect them.

‘Sehun, the current rules are put into place so we as advisors can replace them with better ones, and sometimes forming the better ones means going against the current ones’

‘Does that even make sense? General Chen, did you know that this book was banned? Burnt by the thousands by our own army? You should know so why haven’t you got rid of it?’, Sehun exclaims, his voice risen to a high, the rest of the aliens slightly stressed out. Out of everyone in the group, the person who has given the least amount of stress was Sehun himself, quiet and minding his own business. This has been the first time Sehun’s retaliated.

‘Calm down Sehun. Xiumin does have a point. If we need to beat the Red Force, we might as well know what they are’, Chen finally speaks over, his voice just as stern as everyone else is, the atmosphere thickening once General Chen appeared, the real General Chen, the charismatic one which got him to the top in the first place.

‘But this book is made up of lies. Made by the Red Force for propaganda’

‘Is that so?’, General Chen comments, looking at the way Baekhyun rolls his eyes.

‘Is that what they’ve been feeding you at school?’, Baekhyun shakes his head, chuckling at the absurdity, sipping his drink and whistling for exLLE to come to him, his hands stroking his pet’s ears. He turns to Suho, lifting his glass up, ‘And this is why I don’t trust your government’

‘What? What are you talking about? Baekhyun, what are you talking about?’, Sehun shouts in anger, looking over at everyone, especially General Chen, his General, the General he trusts.

‘254 years ago, EXO was at war with the Red Force, millions of lives were lost and millions more at stake as each planet around the galaxy were burning in flames. Much so that the very nature of lifestyle was not experienced for 50 whole generations. Many people who were born in war died knowing nothing but war’, Chanyeol explains, his voice not really is, but of a female intercom reading out the data he had collected over a few days, a data lost in the galactic signal, encrypted with millions of complications, making it impossible for anyone to open and read. But Chanyeol a cyborg and a very good hacker, ‘Due to the desperation for the war to end, the Commanding General at the time, Commander Kim of the 88 Lucky Clan decides to change gears and plans during a mission in hitting the main base. He had sent three thousand of his ships to die as he distracts the Red Force, hacking into their engines and aircraft, sending it to fly over to the Abyss, to the place where light cannot reach. After approximately losing three million soldiers, Commander Kim successfully extracts the Red Force’s main base, the rest of them dying out’, the voice stops, Chanyeol’s right eye gleaming red as he stares at Sehun, ‘He married a Rabbi, she wrote this book informing the universe just how much sacrifice needed to happen to be able to repress the Red Force’

‘Looks like me and Kai needs to have a little conversation’, Xiumin whispers to himself, looking down at the bind of the book which Sehun holds onto. He’s been too engrossed in reading the content of the book that he didn’t take the time or the effort to see the name imprinted on the side right next to the title.

_Kim Min Soo._

He remembered that name, especially during dinner tables with his family. An old family ancestor which started the line of advisors and Rabbis in their family.

‘Looks like I and Kai are related in some way’

 

 

 

 

‘The Red Force… Is a revolution?’, Sehun and Kai sat on the table, eyes wide open as Sehun gave Xiumin a chance to explain everything.

‘I didn’t even think they were aliens?’, Kai murmurs, coming back into the main control room after waking up with an aching back, cursing at himself for sleeping whilst doing his job, grabbing the toolbox and making his way up to a quiet room, aliens circled around a table as if they were in the middle of a cult meeting with Sehun the only one standing up, looking like he was about to cry. It was not a picture Kai thought would happen.

‘Yeah, it says here, back then EXO Planet was all about the prestigious. Unless you had a name for yourself or money, you weren’t going to live a full life’

‘Sounds like things hadn’t changed much’, Baekhyun whispers, earning a glare from both Xiumin and Suho who smacks him in the head.

‘Well, like every revolution, the discontent started an uprising, first it was a peaceful protest, but as the years go by, it becomes total anarchy, war and chaos. Some Generals and soldiers also decided to side with the Red Force, often working as spies and such for them’

‘Wait… But it says in the book that the Red Force has been taken care of. It states that my ancestors dragged them into the Abyss, surely, they would’ve been sucked into the Black Hole and died, right?’’

‘Well, maybe the current Red Force attack can be Red Force fanatics?’, Suho comments, looking down at the books, peering over the Red Force’s usual tactics, ‘See here, this machine’, Suho points at a machine which looked oh so familiar to everyone, ‘That’s the machine used to extract our powers. Someone must’ve rebuilt it and used the same tactics as the Red Force’

‘Who would want to start another uprising?’, Sehun looks down at the sketch, shivering at its likeliness over the machine which he had faced during the EXO’dus attack.

‘A lot of people, trust me kid’, Baekhyun, being the pessimist and complete anti EXO’ridum, continues to snide remarks.

‘And you’d probably be the first one to sign up for the uprising’, Sehun retaliates, biting back at Baekhyun’s snarls which had started to piss him off.

‘No, I would actually run the other way’, Baekhyun points out, drinking his third bottle of alcohol, still not drunk, watching Chanyeol who shyly opens his flask as he drinks his diesel, like a scared child looking between his arguing parents – Chanyeol did not like this one bit.

‘Oh, and why’s that? Waiting to steal another eye from the dead bodies?’

‘If it’s useful’, Baekhyun comments, ‘ _And_ because starting a revolution doesn’t mean shit. It just means you want to set up a government that benefits _you_ and before you fucking know it… _Boom…_ just another dictatorship’, Baekhyun makes a sarcastic gesture of an explosion with his hands, ‘It’s better to be a lone wolf and be bounded by no one than to follow orders from anyone who thinks they have the rights to boss you around’

‘How very honourable’, Sehun scrunches his nose for god knows how many times at Baekhyun.

‘Look kid, you could either live a free life roaming the ends of the galaxies like me’, Baekhyun chuckles, taking a swig at his alcohol as he finally gets back up the table, ‘Or live your life serving one of those bozos right there’, Baekhyun points at Chen who rolls his eyes, lecturing Kai to comb his hair and look normal whereas the alien sitting next to Sehun lifts his feet up as he sits, trying to get rid of a hang nail on one of his toes, showing it to Chen, laughing as the General finally gives in to his stupidity, getting rid of his silent treatment that he’d been giving the Commander’s son for the past couple of hours, ‘You choice honey’, Baekhyun says to Sehun, ending their conversation and making his way his seat, exLLE walking right next to him.

 

 

 

 

Kai didn’t know it would be a pain in the ass for Chen to ignore him – he had always wanted the General to leave him alone – but ever since their argument, it’s been more of a pain than a blessing to have Chen avoiding him like a plague. Which was why he couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief once Chen looks over at him, frowning as he crosses his arms, glaring at him.

‘Why do you look like a mess? Fix your hair goddamn it’, Chen complains, looking at Kai up and down and not seeing a Commander’s son, but seeing just a son, a whiny spoilt and messy son that does nothing good than causing trouble and looking like trouble.

‘Oh, come on, I just got up from sleep, give me a break’, Kai whines, but his feelings are anything but the tone he uses when he converses with Chen. He was glad to have the alien talking to him again. Chen spots Xiumin getting up beside him, walking with Suho as they continue to converse more about their recent findings, Chanyeol now putting himself to sleep mode and closing his eyes to sleep. All this hacking and arguing have been giving him a headache. Within the next couple of minutes, Kai and Chen were left on their one once Sehun sighs, giving Kai and a small pat on the back before walking off and out of the main control room, probably wanting to rest properly with everything that’s happened. It all seemed too familiar to Kai as they both begin to feel awkward being left alone with each other, Chen awkwardly scratching his head as he looks over at Kai who was still fiddling with his hangnails.

‘You are a piece of work’, he whines, scrunching his nose to get up, but Kai reaches his hand out to grab him before he can leave.

‘Look… Can we talk?’

‘I’m not in the mood for talking right now Kai’, Chen whines, prying his hands away and making his way out of the controller room and maybe to a spare room.

‘I’m sorry… Okay?’, Kai raises his voice as he tries to call Chen back, ‘Maybe I was a little harsh on you before, but you were really pissing me off’

‘Kai’

‘Maybe you thought me telling my dad about you brings dirt to how you came to rise in ranks, but I really only did just put in a good word. He decided to pick up my good word and checked your profile which was more than good. So, if you think you didn’t work hard for the post, I’m here to say that you did’, Kai begins, making everyone, including Baekhyun who was now slightly drunk, to look at them, Xiumin looking rather lovingly at the two interactions, elbowing Suho for his attention as he points at the two at the back.

‘Kai, I’m not mad at you for being the one who recommended me to your father’, Chen breathes out, ‘I’m just mad at everything else’

‘What?’

‘Kai, you’re still part of the EXO’ridium army and you are under my post. I’m responsible for you as a General is responsible for his subjects and his Lieutenant. Not as a father responsible for his kid’, Chen explains, giving Kai a friendly smile as he tries to explain himself, lifting up his frustration, all the things he’d kept buried ever since he got promoted.

‘How being responsible for me as a brother?’, Kai calls out, a voice in a stutter, his thoughts slightly shocked at the sudden statement.

‘Oh shit’, Baekhyun whispers from the back, Suho and Xiumin stopping their conversation completely, immerse at Kai and Chen.

‘What?’

‘Am I not allowed to think of you as a brother?’

‘Kai, I’m your General’

‘A General wouldn’t go out his way to save my ass multiple times when my dad tried to get me blacklisted in the Army. I know you were the one who persuaded him to let me stay’, Kai comments, making Chen feel uncomfortable as he recalls the time he tried to calm down a raging Commander in his office, ‘And a General wouldn’t miss his meeting to race their way to EXO’dus to mend a measly Lieutenant’s broken heart, huh?’, Kai laughs, remembering the time Chen allowed Kai to get completely wasted after his girlfriend broke up with him, taking care of the drunk alien as he roams around the Black Market, singing karaoke and gambling the night away.

‘I needed to babysit you, otherwise your father would kill me’, Chen coughs, excusing himself, but even he didn’t know why he got himself in trouble and ended up filing three hundred reports as punishment all because he saw a crying Kai walking around his base, eyes sunken and his usual fun and chirpy self-gone.

‘Yeah, sure’, Kai murmurs, sighing in defeat, ‘Yeah, of course, you are my father’s right-hand man’, Kai utters, smiling his usual smile, letting Chen walk off as he sits back down, shaking Chanyeol to wake up. Chen wanted to say something, wanted to somehow explain himself, but he couldn’t find the right words, so he just left, walked straight out of the main control room.

‘That. Was. _Awkward’,_ Baekhyun comments the moment silence engulfs the whole room, exLLE meowing almost as if to agree with his owner, Suho and Xiumin glaring at Baekhyun’s unnecessary comment.

‘Shut up Baekhyun’, Suho orders, hitting the top of his head with a book as he sits alongside Suho.

 

 

 

 

D.O’s wrists are burning red as soon as he arrives at a planet, whining in pain as his skin begins to blister as he stirs his jail cell with the electric controller.

‘MAMA almighty’, D.O whines, looking and seeing bleeding scars, ‘This is going to be a pain in the ass’, he whispers to himself, grabbing the keys and opening the cell, jumping onto the ground of the planet he first laid eyes on, leaving the hovering jailcell by itself, but the corner of the parking area, ‘Where am I?’, he whispers to himself, looking around to find a quite city centre before him, aliens of a much more modest class roaming the city, mechanic shops, restaurants and many more decorated the main city, but it was less prestige and high tech than Elyxion. He sees a banner by the end of the Parking Area.

_Welcome to EXO’luxion._

Ahh. So, he was in one of the planets orbiting around EXO Planet, a planet just as big as EXO Planet and Elyxion, but more for the working-class, most teachers, mechanics and everyday workers lived here. It was like EXO Planet was the main frame of government officials, Elyxion for the prestige and EXO’luxion for everyone else. But D.O didn’t mind, it was much cosier, homelike compared to anything he’d step foot on.

‘Excuse me, but is there any Doctor’s Offices around here?’, D.O confidently asks a stranger, a female alien holding her baby as she hosted her groceries to her hovering car.

‘Oh, well just walk straight down at the end of the street and there should be one’, she informs him, giving him a friendly smile, ‘Say, do you need a jacket by any chance?’, she offers, looking down at his ripped shirt and mud-stained pants.

‘Oh, thank you, that would be nice’, D.O smiles, receiving a small jacket which would probably fit him due to his skinny frame, bowing thankfully to her before wrapping himself around the soft and clean clothing, walking straight down the street as she explained, looking around the different shops and houses built upon the planet. He continues to walk down the street, seeing people dine with their families, a few young aliens, probably in their teens, hanging out, the city bustling with life. D.O felt lonely. He didn’t feel terribly homesick since he knew that he would, in fact, becoming home very soon the moment he gets his wrist checked out and ask for the directions of a bus ship. But he missed something else – might he confess _someone –_ maybe a group of idiots who’ve done nothing but made his life miserable.

‘Me? Missing _them?_ Maybe I need therapy after this’, he whispers to himself, laughing at his absurdity, continuing to walk down the street, his eyes scanning for an office, ‘Ah’, he whispers to himself as he stops a white painted building, small yet clean, the word ‘Healing Centre’ written in gold, informing him of a doctor’s office, turning to the right to enter the building, his wrist still burning. Before he can enter the facility, he feels something wrap themselves around his waist, dragging him away from the building and back into the street.

‘Is this the right guy?’

‘Yeah, he is’, he hears deep whispering from behind him, scaring him as they drag him out, lifting a bag over his head, blocking him from seeing anything.

‘Hey! Hey, wait! Who are you?! What do you want from me?!’, D.O screams, trying to pry his arms off them, using all the strength he can muster, kicking and screaming, but it was no use, he was powerless and weak.

D.O was fucked.

 

 

 

 

‘Chen’, Xiumin knocked on the door of the room Chen was currently occupying it, a couple of hours from his conversation with Kai which Baekhyun was still talking about in the main control room, making fun of Kai as the boy mopped around due to Chen’s like of approval with Kai calling him his brother, ‘Chen, can I come in?’, he calls out, turning the doorknob and slowly opening the door, frightened that he might have caught Chen at a bad time, ‘Chen?’

‘Yeah’, the General finally responds, sitting on the rusty bed of Baekhyun’s ship, looking out of the window to find that they were still by the edge of the Abyss, the planets which he once visited are now nothing but small flickering stars. He was a long way from home and from work.

‘Just wanted to make sure you’re okay’, Xiumin utters, closing the door behind him, staring down at the poor General. All this must’ve impacted Chen greatly compared to the others. He was supposed to be at the heart of EXO Planet protecting everyone, but here he was, stranded in the middle of nowhere with no powers and no backup but a few ragtag aliens who were just as useless than any other space dust floating around the air.

‘Yeah, I’m fine’, Chen whispers, closing his eyes for a bit, breathing slowly as he grabs his jacket, trying to comb his hair back to look presentable.

‘You know, you really don’t have to act like a General with us’, Xiumin breaks the tension, walking over to where Chen is, ‘We’re in the middle of nowhere with nothing but each other as company. I’m pretty sure this is the perfect excuse to do whatever you want’, Xiumin reaches his hand out to ruffle Chen’s hair a bit, making it messy, ‘I think we should just take this one step at a time’

‘We can’t afford to take it one step at a time’, Chen sighs in defeat, reaching his hand up to comb back the part Xiumin messed up, ‘Everyone knows I’m alive so I need to get back to EXO’rdium as soon as I can with Kai _and_ my powers by my side. We need to hurry up this stupid mission, otherwise…’, Chen looks down.

‘Otherwise, you might lose your post?’, Xiumin finishes Chen’s concern, the one thing that’s been keeping him up at night, squirming at the thought, always dreaming about it.

‘You probably think I sound superficial fighting for my job’, Chen laughs at himself, but Xiumin shakes his head.

‘No, I think it’s admirable. I mean, why did you think I went to EXO’dus to make a deal with Baekhyun, a bounty hunted scavenger? Obviously not for my own selfish reasons’, Xiumin complies, looking at Chen, his expression warm and friendly, something most Government Advisors tend to lack due to their spoilt high and mighty attitude. Chen was glad that Xiumin was different, that he didn’t think himself as highly because he was a government official. Chen couldn’t recall the countless memories of the time he encountered government officials bitching during meetings

‘But Baekhyun does have a point’, Chen sighs, ‘Kim of the Lucky 88 Clan’s family line has held the title of Commander for centuries. It’ll be stupid to give it up when they have a well-trained son to take up the post. They wouldn’t give it to a measly soldier with no name or family like me’, Chen whispers to himself, looking down at his shoes, ‘But I supposed I knew that from the get-go’, Xiumin observes the way Chen fiddled with his hands ‘I knew Kai was going to replace me one way or another. That’s just the way the world works. Bloodlines are stronger than any other forces’

‘Are you that mad?’

‘Huh?’

Are you mad or jealous that someone like Kai would have a higher chance of replacing you as General?’, Xiumin asks, hitting a sensitive spot for Chen.

‘Of course, I am’, Chen admits, ‘Kai doesn’t like being General, he hates everything about the army. He’s only here because his father forced him to, but me? My whole life is the army, I’ve been a soldier before I was twelve. If I’m not in EXO’rdium, I’m nothing…’

‘Many people born in war died knowing nothing but war’, Xiumin whispers, gaining Chen’s attention as he looks up at the Rabbi, ‘You don’t want to be a General, don’t you?’, Xiumin looks up, observing Chen’s expression, looking deep into the irises of his eyes, seeing it extend slightly, looking away from him, ‘It’s just the only thing you know you can do’

‘Being a General is an _honour’,_ Chen tries to dismiss Xiumin’s assumptions, fixing his jacket and straightening up, taking up the posture of a real General, formal and expressionless, ‘Now please, if you can move aside’

‘That’s not it…’, Xiumin whispers to himself as he watches Chen’s expression turn dark, cold and graceless. If Chen didn’t mind being General and if what he said he truly meant, than why was he acting uncomfortably tensed, ‘Kai’, he calls out, turning around just as Chen was about to make his way out the door of the small room, ‘Kai’, he calls out again, reaching out his hand to hold onto Chen’s wrist, stopping him, ‘You don’t want Kai to have the post’

Chen stops.

‘But not because you want the post for yourself… You don’t want him to become General because you’ve been in dozens of battlefields, you know what happens. You don’t think Kai can take it’

‘It’s not that I don’t think Kai can take it. He grew up in the military just as long as I have, maybe even longer… I just…’, Chen breathes out a sigh of frustration, not really knowing what he was saying, ‘I don’t want him to know anything but war’

‘What?’

‘Kai is the Commander’s son. He held his first gun when he was five, he first saw a dead body when he was seven and a half and the first killed at the age of eight. My planet was in the middle of a war when I was eleven and I saw death everywhere and at twelve I was so messed up I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t even talk, I was a selective mute for the rest of my childhood. I was forced to pick up a gun before I can even go to school. And to see someone like Kai look at a dead body as if it was a garment on the floor? How can you not worry for the kid?’, Chen finally looks at Xiumin, this time everything bare and out in the open, the confession he didn’t think he’d vocalise, something that Chen kept hidden to himself. Being protective over Kai wasn’t his main motivation for his post, he generally did want to become a General, more than he’d like to think, but something about Kai, that weirdo, little alien who was still a teenager when he became a General, something about him and his innocent nature despite seeing nothing but war got him worrying about the alien.

‘He got under your layers, didn’t he?’, Xiumin breaks him out of his thoughts, smiling as he finally got under Chen’s skin, slightly proud of himself that he still had the talent to advice and read someone without the need of them confessing to them, ‘Kai’s not the only one who feels some sort of brotherly love’

‘Shut up and don’t you dare tell him’, Chen glares, pointing at the Rabbi as he lifts his hand up in surrender.

‘Okay boss’

Chen walks out of the room, shaking his head as he blurted out his one confession he’d wanted to keep to himself, turning to the left and opening the door to the main control room where his eyes fell on Baekhyun laughing at him the instant he walked in, an intercom playing by the main frame of his ship, he can see a video of Xiumin and him being repeated constantly; it was their conversation from no more than two minutes ago replaying.

‘I have cameras all over my ship honey’, Baekhyun, raising a glass at Chen, laughing as Suho hits him, telling him off for showing such an intimate conversation to everyone else, even though he did nothing to turn off the intercom once Baekhyun spot Xiumin walking inside one of his spare rooms – you couldn’t blame him for being interested too.

Chen freezes, turning his head around to find Kai sitting right next to Sehun who looks at the General with admiration, more so than he ever did before, elbowing Kai as he gestures his chin up to Chen.

‘Looks like your brother’s come back’, he jokes, looking at Kai who stares at Chen, expressionless and wordless, just staring.

‘ _Baekhyun_ ’, Chen hisses, glaring at the scavenger who continues to drink, giving him a small wink, exLLE sitting by his side, walking over to him and stroking her face on Chen’s hands once she found her owner’s scent on him.

‘Chen!’, Kai finally screams, the initial shock of hearing Chen’s conversation with Xiumin passing by, nothing more but a sheer sense of joy finally replaces the shock, getting up from the chair, making a sensitive Chanyeol flinch at the sudden noise, blocking his ears with his hands, ‘Brother Chen!’, Kai calls out, reaching his arm out to hug him.

‘Kai… Please, don’t misunderstand’, Chen whines, turning a step back, trying to open the door out of the main control room, escaping before Kai can get a hold of him – but Kai wasn’t known as just a measly soldier, he was fucking Lieutenant Kai for more than one reason – the alien knows how to fucking run, chasing after Chen and engulfing Chen under his arms, which was disadvantageous for Chen since the younger alien was slightly taller than him, ‘Kai! Let me go, you little piece of-’

‘You actually care for me!’, Kai shouts, spinning the General around, making everyone laugh, even Chanyeol who was still weak, ‘I promise not to cause any more trouble! Okay brother?’, Kai squeezes Chen even more tightly, leaving him breathless – literally – having to push the younger alien away from him.

‘Call me brother one more time, I will shave you bald’, Chen threatens, pointing a finger at Kai and walking straight out, trying to find the Rabbi so he can kill him.

‘Okay! Brother!’, Kai screams out, waving at Chen before shutting the door, just in case he comes back and really does shave his beautiful locks.

‘Aren’t they cute?’, Suho murmurs, leaning his arm on Baekhyun’s shoulder who only whines as he drinks another bottle.

‘I really need some sleep’, Baekhyun murmurs, ‘Take over for me’, Baekhyun informs, leaving the half-empty bottle, gesturing for exLLE to stay and keep Suho company, walking out of the main control room and towards his own room, bigger than the spare rooms he had, walking up to the top deck of the ship.

 

 

 

 

‘Zhang Yixing, you’re ten minutes late’, the front receptionist looked at a rushing man, wearing business attire with messy hair and no usual coffee in his hands, ‘Are you okay?’, she asked worriedly at the man, concerned that the usual routine that he had ever since he started working for the company almost three years ago has hindered, his usual morning grin replaced with a tired smile.

‘I’m fine. Just a little sick’, he informs her, which she took swiftly since to her, he was, in fact, human and humans can get sick easily, but in reality, he had spent almost all night searching and engaging himself with news coming from his home planet; EXO planet. He never bothered checking up on home ever since his arrival on Earth, but now that he has, he regrets not updating himself sooner. He learnt about Captain Suho’s release from his post, he learnt Commander Kai’s release of his post and he also learnt about his other crew members death, Suho believed as being the only survivor of the failed mission. It kept him up at night that a prestige Captain like Suho was stripped down just like that and how it must have felt, how _lonely_ it must have been to think that every single one of your crewmate as dead and gone. He felt guilty for his Captain.

‘Zhang Yixing! Where have you been?’, he hears Mr Wang screaming the moment the elevator doors open, revealing a very busy floor since yesterday’s system failure brought them more work hours to catch up.

‘I’m sorry sir, I’ve been feeling a little-’

‘I don’t care! I need all these reports done by the end of today, got it?’, Mr Wang passes him another file of paperwork.

‘But sir, I still have some to do with yesterday-’

‘I don’t care. Get them done by the end of today. Got it?’, Mr Wang orders him with no remorse or logical common sense on how one man can get over two hundred paperwork and report done by sundown. And to think he wanted to stay on Earth forever…

‘What am I thinking? Of course, I want to stay on Earth forever!’, Lay whispers to himself, ‘I’m done with being a Doctor’, he persuades himself, smiling his usual friendly smile, placing the folders amongst the other files in his desk, looking around to see the mundane life of a human businessman, although it was hard getting into the role, he managed to find a home in these people and in this job.

But his thoughts revert back to Captain Suho, all by himself and without his powers.

He thinks of the Red Force becoming more powerful with each passing day.

There was no doubt that the bank needed him to function, he was, in fact, a worker. But he couldn’t lie to himself, Suho needed him most at this moment.

But what can he do?

 

 

 

 

‘Chanyeol, get out of my room please’, Baekhyun whines the moment he sees his door opening, seeing the cyborg walk in and rolling his eyes. He did not have time to entertain Chanyeol, he was drunk and tired, ‘I really don’t want to talk to you’

‘Oh. That’s okay’, Chanyeol responds, smiling down at Baekhyun as he lifts up a bottle of something, ‘I’m just here to give this to you’, he passes it to Baekhyun.

‘What is it?’, Baekhyun whines, grabbing the bottle out of Chanyeol hand, lifting the bottle open and taking a whiff, ‘MAMA almighty, what is this? Your piss?’, Baekhyun scrunches his nose the moment he smells the filthy smell.

‘No, it’s a hangover recipe I found on one of my databases, I remember Suho making one of these when he still worked at the MAMA bar. I requested him to make one again for you’, Chanyeol smiles proudly, waiting patiently for Baekhyun to take a sip.

‘I’ll drink it later’, Chanyeol smile falters as he sees Baekhyun putting it away on his bedside table, covering his body with the blankets as he settles himself in his bed, not having proper sleep since god knows when.

‘But… You have to drink it now or else you’ll have a headache. You’ve drunk quite a lot of alcohol and I recommend-’

‘Fine! Just shut the fuck up!’, Baekhyun whines, lifting the covers off him as he reaches his hand out for the bottle, showing it to Chanyeol as he lifts it open, chugging the ugly substance in one go, feeling the burning sensation of something he couldn’t quite make out, ‘Ergh’, Baekhyun gags, feeling it goes down his stomach, ‘This is worse than alcohol’, he whines, closing his eyes as he breathes through his mouth, trying to get rid of the bitter taste it left behind on his tongue.

‘Good. Now you’ll wake up all refreshed’, Chanyeol’s smile is once again back on his face, ‘I’ll see you in a couple of hours’, the waves, closing the door silently behind him as he leaves Baekhyun’s room, leaving him by himself.

‘Chanyeol, where have you been?’, Sehun calls out the moment Chanyeol walked back into the main control room, returning to the main control room once he finished stress cleaning the whole ship, mopping the floors one last time, getting a complaint from both Xiumin and Suho who tripped on the floor twice already.

‘Ooh, it looks like lover boy has been mating again’, Kai calls out after he looks over to find Baekhyun’s empty seat in the main stirring area, Suho reading a book as he set it on autopilot for a while.

‘No…’, Chanyeol dismisses Kai’s assumptions, but Kai was Kai.

‘Ohhh, and he’s not following behind you. Baekhyun must be really tired. How hard must a cyborg’s die-’

‘That’s enough Kai!’, Chen shouts from the other end, sitting next to Xiumin and lifting up a pen only to throw it at Kai, breaking his sentence, which would have disgusted every single one of the aliens present in the room.

‘Chanyeol’s what?’, Sehun innocently asks, curious as to why Chen was giving daggers at Kai, not realising what Kai’s conversation was stirring into.

‘Oh, nothing Sehun. I guess you’re too young to know’, Kai playfully jokes, wriggling his eyebrows as he gives the rookie soldier a sly wink, only leading Sehun to feel more curious.

‘You do realise, those two are going to be the future generation of EXO’rdium?’, Xiumin comments, lifting his head up from his notebook and watching Kai playfully flirt with an oblivious Sehun who continues to mop the floor, creating practically an ocean for everyone to slip on later.

‘I’d rather fight the Red Force than to see that happen’, Chen comments back, making Xiumin chuckle, relaxing in the comfort of the General.

 

 

 

 

‘Let me go! Let me go! Please! I just want to go home!’, D.O screams, his sight still blocked by the bag as he was pushed down, his back feeling cold metal hit him. He felt so powerless and frightened. He needed help and he needed it now before whoever took him kills him, ‘Please don’t kill me! I’ll do anything! Please!’

‘Shut up little alien. I’m trying to eat’, he hears someone shout at him, then he felt a surge of pain in his stomach as someone kicks him, his back hitting the cold metal again.

‘Please…’, he whines, this time whispering to himself, tears threatening to leave his eyes, his hands bounded but shaking furiously, his thoughts were blurred and he couldn’t help but sniffle.

‘Is he crying?’, he hears voices conversing with each other, making fun out of him, calling him names and continuing to kick him senseless.

‘Kai… Kai, please… Help me…’, he whimpers, feeling another surge of a kick hitting him on the back, making him fall forward, his cloth-covered face landing straight on the cold hard ground, ‘Suho… Chen… Anyone, please… Sehun… Help me’, he continues to whisper, calling out the only people he knows, calling out the only aliens he knows who could kill the people beating him right now. But they weren’t here and they’re probably hundreds of galaxies away from where he is. Right now, no one can help him. He was stuck in the middle of nowhere, being abused by strangers.

‘Hey, you two! Captain wants you on the top deck’, he hears another voice, softer than the previous two but just as controlling and intimidating, ordering the aliens beside D.O to get a move on, leaving the bound alien by himself.

‘Ergh, why is the Captain always being too prissy. Let us be in the lower deck where we can have some fun’, the aliens complain, kicking D.O one last time, getting some kind of sadistic pleasure with hearing him whine and whimper in pain.

‘Because he’s the Captain of the Boomerang and he can do whatever he wants’, the voice shouts back, kicking some kind of door as it tells the other two to get a move on, D.O sighing in relief as he doesn’t feel any pain of a kick anymore.

_Captain of the Boomerang?_

Why does D.O feel like he’s heard that post before? Is he some kind of government official? Does this mean he’s been captured and heading straight to EXO Planet?

‘Kai… Please… Suho… Help me’, he calls out their names one more, praying for some kind of miracle that they might hear him.

 

 

 

 

Lay looks down on his computer, after a long hard day of work, it’s two o’clock on the morning by the time he gets back home and he should be sleeping right now so he can energise again for his seven o’clock start, but he refuses to sleep, walking straight into his base and turning on all his system.

If Suho was stripped of his post, then where did the Boomerang go? Was it stripped off him too? Did the government official take it down? Give it to someone else?

Lay types in a formula, adding in the codes for the ship’s search engines. He memorised everything about the ship, even the little codes which Suho set up himself so the lights can change in colour depending on the mood. Captain Suho has always tried to make his ship more homelike since he knew how long each mission may last, some lasting for a whole year.

‘Come on baby’, Lay whispers, waiting for the coordinates to be loaded, ‘Where are you?’, he whispers, looking at the map of a galaxy, trying to see if he recognises the area, the red dot which signals where the Boomerang was shining brightly straight in the middle of the galaxy. He recognises the planets aligned in one straight line, orbiting what seems to be a burning star.

_The Milky Way?_

‘You’re right here?’, Lay whispers to himself, seeing the ship travelling slowly past Jupiter, a planet in the Milky Way where Earth is also placed, ‘Why are you here?’, Lay asks, his hands already grabbing his phone, Suho’s number saved at the top of his list, ‘Siri, call Captain Suho…’

 

 

 

 

‘Captain, you wished to see us?’, two aliens sporting scavenged clothes walked into the main auditorium of one of the most prestige ships in the galaxies, bigger and brighter than any other ships.

‘Yes, I wanted to have a little talk about our _guest’,_ a tall Captain stands by the window frame, looking out at the galaxy ahead of him, a smirk playing on his face, ‘I expect you’ve been treating him well?’, he asks, turning around, his yellow hair shining brightly, his clothes encrusted in diamond and fine silk, ‘If I see any bruises on him, the both of you will be the ones to pay? Do you understand?’, he says with a soft voice, but there was something sickening in his tone, something threatening which sends the two aliens back.

‘Uh… Yes, sir’, they both stutter, looking at each other with slight fear in their eyes.

‘I expect him all cleaned and perfect by the time I end my duties for the day, understand?’, the Captain orders, gesturing his hand for his dismissal as the two aliens were left in a stuttering mess, bowing to him as the exit the main auditorium, the lights changing in colours of green.

‘Why are the lights always bloody changing in this ship?’, the Captain whines, looking down at the intercom in front of him, seeing the picture that had been distributed around on every ship, already getting famous each passing day. A picture of the Commander’s son holding hands with an unknown alien.

_D.O Kyungsoo of Planet 0.12_

_Reported to be Lieutenant Kai’s recent lover. Both survivors from the EXO’dus attack where they used to carry out their affairs._

‘I have Kai’s lover in this very ship as we speak’, the Captain murmurs to himself, playing a smirk on his lips, ‘Let’s see how desperate Kai becomes once he knows’, he whispers, typing something on his intercom, looking at the recent video taken of D.O being kidnapped, strapped and bounded, dragged to his ship, ‘I guess there’s only one way to find out’, he utters, pressing a button which sends the video out, using Earth’s strong satellite to send it to every ship from a thousand miles away which sends it to other ships a thousand miles away from them. Kai would see this video and see his message. Then he’ll have Kai by the throat once and for all.

He presses his speaker.

‘Bring him to me’

****

 

**__ **

 


	9. Chill

 

 

 

 

In the midst of the whirlpool of the galaxy that they are currently engulfed in, Baekhyun’s ship – formerly known as the Butterfly – feels in the utmost like a speck of dust flying across the cosmos, it’s once grandeur state now being more than a couple of metal screwed onto each other, barely hanging on in the outer realm of the backbone.

‘We’re not going to survive if we keep hanging on like this’, Suho brings his head down, his voice in a whispering state as to not alert Chen and Xiumin who continued to stay close inside the main control room along with the two pilots, refusing to resign the day away in one of Baekhyun’s many compartments, ‘We need to land somewhere’, Suho continues to urge the main pilot, now sober and bored, playing with the buttons in his control panel, looking over the dozens of intercoms he had placed all over his ship prior to the interchanging events in Exo’dus, looking over to watch a few of the aliens scattering in each of his compartments, the movement of a tan skinned alien opening and closing hundreds of his draws which stored most of his scavenged items which he used to make a living off on, his eyes rolling at the fingers which glide across the suit he once found lying around Elyxion a few months ago, trying it on and continuing to say something Baekhyun’s intercom could not pick up, but with the exaggerated movements and hung expression, the boy was probably pretending royalty in the middle of an interview of some sort.

‘Have you not learnt your lesson yet? How many times do we have to land on a planet for you to understand that we’re basically magnets attracting disaster’, Baekhyun points out, stroking exLLE’s ears as the creature passes him another plateful of food, ceramic pottery hoisted between her mouth as Baekhyun lifts the food off it, ‘We’re staying here’

‘Our fuel’s running out, your ship is in ruins and we barely have any signal here’

‘And you’re the point is?’

‘My point is, we could die any minute if your ship happens to malfunction _and_ we can’t contact anyone. How are we supposed to attract the Red Force if we don’t have a signal?’, Suho complains, his eyes submerging down as his brows furrowed and lips tensed. Suho had never had an in compliable right-hand man before, the unfamiliar frustration riling inside him as he is once again ignored and turned down.

‘We have enough signal to contact Dr Lay who can give us whatever we need’, Baekhyun clashes down Suho’s concern, his voice muffled over the food which he had stuffed inside his mouth, ‘And in terms of fuel… Well, we’ll run down and have a quick trip in a local planet, but no one’s getting off’, Baekhyun compromises, looking down the battery which glowed a furious orange, signalling the end of the ship’s life but still hanging on a thread, ‘Once it goes to red, then we’ll go’

‘You’re playing too off the edge here’, Suho counter argues with the plan, his glasses, albeit cracked, hoisted up, resting on his nose, his eyes scanning over the figures and data which displayed itself onto the panel. It seems more so that Suho could not even fathom just how irreversibly perfect his previous ship once was, missing it more each day as he ends up looking at the shredded piece of junk that he was currently controlling – yes, he did have to admit that the size in Baekhyun’s ship was a sight – but everything itself was shit to say the very least.

‘I still don’t think rusting in the middle of nowhere is going to get us anywhere’, Suho insisted, his eyes suspecting the cracked bulb which started to signal red, another warning that an area in the ship is falling apart.

‘Just don’t fret Captain. We’ll be fine’, Baekhyun persisted on, his eyes barely leaving another intercom which showed Sehun fiddling with his weaponry, the ones he managed to salvage during the attacks, his fingers checking the system and reloading, ‘This kid is such a rookie soldier’, Baekhyun comments aloud, gaining Suho’s attention, his eyes following the trails of Baekhyun’s gaze, fixing himself to look down on Sehun who has now left his gun, resting his hand on the strap which lay his small laser gun, fully reloaded and red.

‘Don’t judge them. He probably grew up in EXO Planet. The boy doesn’t know anything but shooting guns’, Suho blurs the line between Captain and friend, turning off Baekhyun’s intercoms and leaving the other aliens to relax in private, closing his eyes as he leans his back on his chair, crossing his arms as he looks down to watch exLLE, a big creature, up to his knees if he stands, sitting loyally by Baekhyun’s side.

‘Where did you get her by the way?’, Suho asks, curiosity getting the better of him.

‘exLLE? Earth, of course’, Baekhyun replies, sighing as he no longer has anything to watch now that Suho had turned off the intercoms, ‘One of my clients were looking for a creature from Earth for some sort of decorations, so I went down and took one’

‘Did you give it to them?’

‘No, I wouldn’t have exLLE by my side if I did’, Baekhyun snorts, his fingers continuing to scratch the back of exLLE’s ears, the creature purring at the contact.

‘Why not?’

‘They were about to skin her alive’, Baekhyun explains, laughing as he watches Suho’s expression turn sour, ‘They wanted to use her furs for decoration and I thought that was bullshit so I kept her and the money’

‘How honourable’, Suho rolls his eyes as soon as Baekhyun finishes his sentence, comfortable silence filling between the two of them. For the most part, Suho had made amends with his morals that he was teaming up with a bounty hunted scavenger who stole from the dead and made a living scamming people, allowing himself to care for a rookie soldier and three very high profiled government aliens. His crew was never this diverse in class and moral, most of them being in the same rank in the military and even the same age.

‘Chen! Chen! Help! Chanyeol’s malfunctioning again!’, Kai bursts into the control panel, throwing a fit as he drags an unconscious Chanyeol with twitching legs, his hair covering his eyes.

‘You take care of him!’, Chen shouts back, his eyes still glued onto the book he’d stolen off Xiumin.

‘I can’t find his reset button’

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake’, Baekhyun whines, rolling his eyes, ‘I’ll do it!’, he gives in, seeing that the two most elite members currently present in his ship has been doing his head in and Kai had only just come in, ‘Get out of my way!’

 

 

‘D.O’

‘That’s an odd name’

‘It’s his family name’

‘Who cares about him’

‘He does look attractive if you look at him long enough’

‘Maybe he’s good in bed?’

‘You reckon he’ll let us try him?’

‘Fuck off, we’re not allowed to touch him’

‘Leave him be’

‘I still can’t believe _that’s_ Kai’s lover’

‘Kai never had a great taste in alien anyway’

‘That’s true. He fucks about just anything that breathes’

‘I don’t even think it needs to breathe for Kai to fuck it’

D.O closes his eyes, his hands pressed against his ears as he tries to block out the muffling noises of voices which vibrated from the walls and into his cell, the dripping of water and buzzing of engines emerging within since he was thrown at the bottom of the ship. No light made its way inside the room which he was locked in, just the feeling of damp floors and vibrating walls was the only thing that gave D.O a feeling that he was still alive. He couldn’t even see his hands.

‘I heard he’s the reason why Kai’s been messing around’

‘Don’t tell me… He’s purposely getting himself kicked out of EXO’rdium just so he can be with him?’

‘That’s the story going around’

‘Shit… Is he really that worth it? He’s just a farmer’

‘Who knows. Maybe he’s _really_ good in bed’

D.O leans his head on the walls, bumping into it softly as the ship continues to move.

‘Kai’s lover’, he whispers, closing his eyes as he clenches hands into a fist, ‘Kai’s lover my ass’, he continues to murmur to himself, finding the obscurity in the whispers which he can hear, the voices escaping and pulsating through the thin walls, ‘He doesn’t even remember my name…’

 

 

‘Hey Baekhyun’, Kai emerges from behind, shocking both the pilot and his cat from sleep, exLLE hissing in a fit when Kai pushes her off Baekhyun’s lap, taking her place.

‘Get the fuck off me’, Baekhyun growls, trying to push Kai’s sudden weight off him, but to no avail, the commander’s son used his trained strength to pin Baekhyun down, looking at the control panel in front.

‘Hey, do you mind if we check something?’, Kai murmurs with speed, his words almost mixed together as he tried to look for the radio intercom.

‘What do you want?’

‘You think you can connect to the security camera of a certain planet?’

‘Kai, we’re in the middle of nowhere. Of course, I can’t fucking do that’, Baekhyun whines, ‘Now can you please get off me? I’m trying to sleep!’, his arms had breached around Kai’s arms, trying to pull him off, his breath hitched and lips tighten. Is this alien made out of steel?

‘Come on, I’m sure we could give it a shot’, Kai urges on, his eyes widening as he finds the main controllers for the intercom, setting up the signal range in search of a small agriculture planet.

‘What do you need to see anyway?’, Baekhyun gives up, his thin arms lagging like a dead man. He lifts up his chin, eyes squinting at Kai’s fast-moving fingers which typed a code in, most probably the coordinates of the planet he was looking for, ‘0.43, -0.12’, Baekhyun reads out, the green flashes of numbers etched on the screen, Kai zooming in as he tries to find the perfect timing to place their signal intercom, attempting to connect with the nearest camera despite the flask of interrupting signal waves.

‘Dammit’, Kai hisses, smacking the control panel in an attempt to fix the static which had begun to show.

‘You’re checking the planet D.O came from?’, Baekhyun asks, his eyes gleaming over the red dot following the map in which Kai had managed to salvage, ‘Why?’

‘I have a feeling that D.O might have gone back home’

‘Gone back home? Why?’

‘When we were still in Elyxion, he was going on about going home and becoming a farmer… Maybe he slipped past the guards and got into a shuttle ship…’, Kai whispers, his tongue sticking out as he concentrates, looking at the time and the stars ahead, aligning them together to gain the perfect signal.

‘He wanted to leave us behind?’, Baekhyun asks, slightly surprised at the transited change. D.O had always been the quiet and passive alien which had always followed the rest of them in silence. It seemed rather odd that he’s the first one to call quits in the mission, albeit, he wasn’t really into it in the first place.

‘He was just babbling. He does that when he’s freaking out’, Kai points out, urging Baekhyun to look at him with intensity.

‘How do you know that? Have you even spoken to him once?’

Were Kai and D.O ever close? Baekhyun hadn’t noticed the two saying one word to each other, let alone having the knowledge of each other’s habits and quirks.

‘Ey, he’s a small planet alien. Everything he does is predictable’

‘Yet he’s the one missing’, Baekhyun rolls his eyes more than he’d ever done, which is a record since most of his costumes were stupid rundown aliens nowadays. The two aliens along with a very pissed off exLLE watch the screen zoom, the static still present and distracting, its oddness in the specks in which the blinking lights turns purple, the screen zooming into something – a signal.

‘Shit, it worked’, Kai smirks at himself, smug and as always, proud of himself for being the smartest alien in the fucking galaxy, ‘Sweet’, he whispers, gaining Baekhyun’s utmost attention, his eyes fixate of the pixelated screen, watching the flashing lights and co-ordinates turn into land and buildings, robot cattle chewing soft metal grass on the ground. The planet was rural as rural can get, most of the machines being used are old technology which most factories had stopped producing years ago.

‘Where would D.O be?’, Baekhyun mutters, allowing Kai to zoom in, looking over the area at a 360-degree angle, Kai spinning them around until they find a barn, a colour in red and two aliens, one who looked exactly like D.O – almost like a carbon copy – his lips big and full, eyes even bigger. She was tending on a particular robot cattle, sweat beading on her forehead as he straightens her back and stretches her arms out.

‘Those must be his parents’, Kai whispers, zooming in, trying to see if he can find their profiles.

 

**_D.O Shinyoung_ **

**_-56 years old_ **

**_-farmer_ **

 

**_D.O Shinhye_ **

**_-55 years old_ **

**_-farmer_ **

 

Those have to be his parents. Kai couldn’t help but feel a tug in his stomach. A churning which forces him to look around the field, in search of a small boy with dark hair cut short, scars on his arms and maybe even a smile now that he’s back home. _Please, please, please,_ let him be here.

‘What the fuck?’, he utters the moment he hears the blasting of interrupting static filling in the screen the sound system emitting ungodly noises of high pitched signals, forcing Baekhyun to finally push Kai successfully off him, his fingers dancing along the control panels, swift and peaceful, despite the uncalm atmosphere in which they were put in, ‘What is that?’

‘I don’t know…’, Baekhyun responds, his eyes tightly fixate in trying to fix whatever was happening to his intercom.

‘What the fuck is that noise?!’, Chen screams, his concentration being distracted, his head lifted along with Xiumin who had just woken up, his eyes swollen and cheeks red from leaning on his books for too long.

‘What’s going on?’, a startled Xiumin yawns, hunched in pain as the noise continues to eject itself into every sound system inside Baekhyun’s ship.

‘Baekhyun!’, they can hear the screaming of Suho even from a corridor away, probably running inside as soon as the noise began, abandoning his sleep altogether.

 

_Kim Kai… Kim Kai…_

 

The static begins to speak, odd and peculiar noises mixing with it, almost drowning in the voice which said the commander’s son’s name.

WTF.

 

_Kim Kai. Lieutenant Kim Kai._

 

‘Why is the voice addressing my name?’, Kai takes a step back, tripping over exLLE’s tail, looming back from the intimidating voice.

‘Maybe it’s your father?’

‘Oh shit’, at that assumption, Chen stands straight, speeding his way over to Kai, holding onto his arms as they wait for the rest of the message to be sent through. If the commander had finally found them, then Chen has a shit ton of explaining to do.

 

_It’s been a while, Kim Kai…_

 

Wait a minute.

‘That’s not my father’s voice…’, Kai murmurs, looking at the ground with the sudden perk of the voice, the way it edges of the syllables with growling manner. It’s not his father’s voice, but it was a voice he was familiar with. He turns to Chen, his brows lifted up in shock and nervousness, ‘Oh shit’, he can only hold onto Chen.

 

_This is Iris, Captain of the Boomerang speaking_

 

‘Captain of the what?!’, all the aliens simultaneously scream, Suho rushing inside the main control room along with Chanyeol who had perked awake at the sudden jolt of static which almost electrocuted his brain.

 _Oh shit._ Kai forgot. He swivels his head, eyes falling on a breathless Suho who was squeezing Chanyeol’s arms tightly.

‘Did he say Captain of the Boomerang? M _y_ Boomerang?’, Suho shouts, running over beside Baekhyun, finding himself in the co-pilot seat, ‘What is this? A message?’

 

_Kim Kai. I’ll be needing what you stole from me if you ever want to see your lover boy again._

 

‘What the fuck is going on?’, Chen turns to Kai, ‘Who’s Iris and what the hell is he talking about?’

‘Um…’

 

_If you do not bring what I want then your lover boy will be gone and dead by the end of the week._

 

‘Dude, you’re in a relationship?’

‘No! I haven’t had a proper relationship since _you know who_ broke up with me’, Kai explains to Chen, confused as to why Iris was making such odd proposition, ‘I don’t know what he’s talking about…’

 

_D.O Kyungsoo of planet 0.12 is currently taken hostage inside my ship. I will give you a week. I expect you to be in my ship with the slip in your hands. Got it?_

 

The static stops and so does the message. All the alien, all six of them, gathered together in the control room, head turning to look at Kai, wondering what the fucker has gotten himself into this time.

‘Please tell me you have a plausible explanation for this?’, Chen whispers, eyes almost pleading as he looks at Kai, being reminded of how much he hates the commander’s son.

‘Iris… Is some guy I met…’

‘Kim Kai…’, Chen clenches his teeth, hissing his name with the slow fury which started to climb inside his stomach.

‘He was an ex-navy Captain who lost his job due to some kind of misconduct. I needed information from him since he was present during the battle of the four lours but he wouldn’t budge. He was being stubborn and stupid and I…’

‘What did you do?’

Kai swiftly looks at Suho, guilt climbing inside him.

‘I… Sort of… Made him… The Captain of Boomerang…’

‘What?!’, Suho screams at him, his footsteps already on his way to face Kai, which the tan alien was expecting, so he grips harder on Chen’s arms, using the General as a shield from a very furious ex-captain.

‘I really needed something from him! And when I offered he told me everything! I had to give him the ship! I wouldn’t be honourable if I lied to him!’

‘Yeah, because you sound real honourable now, don’t you’, Chen mutters, his hands clenching, waiting for the right moment to hit Kai in the head – which is usually right after he finished explaining what shit he got up to, ‘Look, what is he talking about? What did you steal from him?’

‘I didn’t steal anything from him! I gave him the ship after persuading my father and I… Sort of…’

‘Sort of what?’

‘Reset the ship on mop-up duty’

‘You didn’t…’

‘Mop up?’, Baekhyun asks, looking to his left to where he can spot Chanyeol scanning through his files.

‘Current Captain of the Boomerang on ‘Mop Up’ duty, also known as scrapers who roams around the galaxy, presumably at the edge, picking up trash around the Galactic Highways’, Chanyeol recalls, reading from his databases as the rest of the group circles around the front of the ship where Kai and Baekhyun was.

‘You used my ship as a dumpster?!’, Suho raises his voice, ‘How dare you!’

‘I couldn’t let him go back into the ranks! He was already on his third strike!’, Kai defends himself, ‘I had to compromise’, Chen couldn’t believe what he was hearing, even in the middle of nowhere, he still had to take care of Kai’s stupid mistakes.

‘Well, what can we do now? He has D.O’, he murmurs, looking at Baekhyun who sits by the pilot, ‘Is there any way for us to get to the ship?’

‘And risk getting caught by a government official? Don’t be ridiculous’

‘He’s a Mop-Up guy though…’, Sehun points out, hair messy and face fresh out of sleep.

‘Still a government official though’, Baekhyun dismisses, cutting off the intercom which continued to repeat the same message, ‘And this message is probably being sent to every single ship out there in the Galactic Highway, I mean, if we can pick it up, everyone else can. EXO’rdium ships will be surrounding the Boomerang and waiting for us to approach them’, Baekhyun continues to explain, shaking his head in dismissal with any other suggestions that have been thrown back.

‘I can’t believe that even though we’re at the edge of the universe. _Literally,_ the edge of the universe and you still give me stress’, General Chen whispers to himself, side-eying Kai as he sees the alien retract from the crowd at the front of the ship, looking down and pacing behind them. He can see that he was contemplating on a plan and it didn’t take long before the others joined in the debate with a raised voice.

‘He has D.O, we can’t just leave him be now that we know he’s imprisoned’, Suho voices out, stamping his opinion first with a solid growl, glaring at Baekhyun as the scavenger. The ex-captain had once again infused his cold charismatic nature, his voice deepening in a serious tone, unlike Baekhyun’s whines.

‘Open Casket. That’s where we’re heading’, Baekhyun mumbles, seeing as the rest of the group showed no sign of defying Suho. Chen was the only one looking slightly worried, not being sure whether flying straight into the trap was a good idea, but he turns to face Kai, seeing the alien’s worried expression, but not worry of their capture, a sense of worry for another alien.

‘Okay, look. What if we make a plan. A proficient one so we can get D.O back and not get killed or captured?’, Sehun interrupts the silence which had threatened to slice them all in two.

‘And what grand plan have you got under your sleeve, Oh Sehun of sector 94?’, Baekhyun calls out, looking at the rookie straight in the eye and snorting once he sees his blank expression, ‘That’s what I thought’

‘Well… We have a General, a Lieutenant, a former Captain _and_ a Rabbi… I’m sure you guys can think of something, right?’, Sehun responds, his hopeful eyes gazing across the room where the other aliens stood, ‘And we practically have a computer of information here’, he points at Chanyeol, who looked tired, his red eyes glitching.

‘Well, go on then’, Baekhyun calls out, ‘If you make a plan that might actually work, then I’ll drive this ship straight into the milky way’

‘Maybe we don’t need to drive your ship’, Xiumin whispers, looking over to his books again, pulling out his notebooks which had tons of notes from his previous publications about the different types of spaceships, from the Middle Era to now.

‘Oh, so we’ll just float there? How lovely’, Baekhyun comments, rolling his eyes but Chen walks over to Xiumin, looking from his shoulders, reading his analysis.

‘What if… We make our own ship?’, Xiumin points out, laying the book on the main controller, eXLLE, moving to the side as the group of aliens’ hurdle together, observing the different sketches Xiumin had made along with dozens of detailed notes, all linked with arrows and headers, scribbled and messy, blotched ink everywhere.

‘We don’t have the spare parts for an extra ship’, Suho points out, looking around to see that the ship they’re in is barely in good condition, let alone strong enough for a few parts to be torn from it.

‘Actually… It does’, Sehun points out, ‘I was cleaning the lower deck of the ship… There was a spare engine in there’, Baekhyun snorts, looking up at the rookie soldier.

‘It’s not a spare one you idiot. It’s a busted one. It stopped working so I had it changed’, Baekhyun explains, closing Xiumin’s notes, ‘Captain Suho here has a point, we don’t have any spare parts’, Baekhyun crosses his arms, ‘That plan is hopeless’

‘No, it’s not’, Kai barges into the conversation, ‘I can fix it’

‘You? Psft’, Baekhyun continues to chuckle at each and every one of their ideas.

‘I’m a Lieutenant and the current commander’s son. I may be a scoundrel, but I’m useful when I need to be’, Kai defends himself, grabbing hold of Xiumin’s book, snatching it for himself and grabbing hold of Chanyeol’s sleeve, ‘C’mon Chanyeol, I need your computer brain. I’ll get the engines up and running by the end of the day’

‘I’ll help you’, Sehun offers, putting his small laser gun down on the main control panel, already raising his way to where Kai is.

‘What a kiss ass’, Baekhyun mutters between his breathe, earning a punch from Suho, who gives him a warning glare.

‘I’ll try and see if I can design a small ship for a few of us to use to fetch D.O’, with that, Xiumin turns from the main control room, walking out to where his bags of books and knowledge was placed, Chen following him shortly behind.

‘You’re really a pessimist on a stick, aren’t you?’, Suho tuts, sitting down on the co-pilot seat, allowing exLLE to jump on his lap, sniffing his scent which had become familiar to the feline Earth creature, twirling around before settling on his lap.

‘I’m driving around seven aliens with no powers at the edge of the galaxy, my ship’s being tagged as the Red Force’s main target, an innocent small planet alien taken into hostage, along with four government officials being boarded at my ship, _two_ of them being searched by the EXO government. My life is a misery right now’

‘At least that bounty tag of yours will be lifted’, Suho jokes, laughing when Baekhyun turns his gaze to him, his eyes glaring.

‘If I live to see the day’

 

 

‘Now, if we use the old infrastructure of the original anatomy of the first ship… It seems to be the simplest’, Xiumin whispers to himself, taking out his EXOphone and quickly making a holograph of his basic structure, spinning it around to analysis it’s stability, curving the main body a little to allow more rooms for the pipes.

‘I think we need it to be as small as possible. Baekhyun’s scrap metals aren’t the strongest’, Chen points out, walking inside Xiumin’s room, walking around Baekhyun’s main storage room which is two stories worth of floors, shelves and drawers, everything a scavenger can scavenge.

‘Yeah… I thought that would be the case’, Xiumin nods, making his model smaller, taking away another piece and adding a more stable structure, ‘Let’s hope that Baekhyun has spare minatone metal lying around’

‘I’m sure he does. I just found a jar of human eyeballs in one of the drawers. His storage room is packing’, Chen comments, making Xiumin grimace at the description. Xiumin continues to read on to the various books he managed to steal, trying to intake as much information as he can so he and Chen can start as soon as possible. Despite their limited time, he doesn’t feel pressured by Chen who also makes notes along with him. He’d think that a captain like Chen, he’d intimidate his inferiors into doing things fast and quick, but he oddly felt at ease in the middle of a messy situation.

Xiumin stole glances at Chen’s direction, seeing how the captain quietly worked, reading through the books he hadn’t gotten around to reading, noting things down and taking things in one step at a time.

‘You’re good at this’, Xiumin points out, rather oddly since they shouldn’t be wasting time chatting, but Chen looks up at him, staring.

‘At what?’

‘Leading’

‘I haven’t done anything yet’

‘I know’, Xiumin shrugs nonchalantly, but there was something serious in his tone as he spoke out to Chen, ‘You’re just good at taking control and making people feel relax’

‘Me? Relaxed?’, Chen couldn’t help but to give a hearty laugh of disbelief. Being a captain for one of the biggest armies in the galaxy, he’s been described as many things, but relaxed isn’t one, ‘I’m the most uptight person you could ever meet’

‘But you make people feel at ease’, Xiumin defends his observation, ‘You yourself may be uptight, but you make people feel calm, they trust you… And when they trust you, they’re loyal to you’, Xiumin adds on, flipping through the book but not paying as much attention, their conversation taking in their concentration, ‘That’s probably why you’re still General despite Kai being around’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Chen, I may not have said anything, but I am a Rabbi. I have good reading and observation skills. He may not act like it, but Kai also wants the General position’

‘Now I’m questioning your skills’, Chen points out, closing his book, his eyes intently gazing on Xiumin alone, ‘Kai just told me that he did all of those shit to get him kicked out of his post, why would he want it back?’

‘Like you said. War is the only thing Kai has known. One day, he’ll wake up to find out that war is the only thing he can do and he’ll be needing his post back when he realises it’

Chen couldn’t believe Xiumin was throwing his own words back at him. Chen was also a war child, yet he’d give to see the day where everything is warless... But... if he wanted a warless galaxy, why is he also intent in being General?

‘Kai sleeps around, he’s immature and he acts like a child, that’s because he never had a childhood. Once he realises that he’ll find his passion in the only thing that he was allowed to do’

Chen had never thought of Kai’s mental war within himself. All he ever thought about was a spoilt child wanting to leave his responsibilities, but now that he was thinking about it, Xiumin had a point.

All Kai had seen is war and maybe that’s all Kai can think about.

‘That makes me want the post even more’, Chen hears himself, his voice soft but stern, hinted with purpose.

 

 

‘Gotta hand it to you. You can lift’, Kai calls out between breaths, watching Sehun lift another pipe with ease, pulling it to the side as they look over to see the rusted engine, covered in dust, his torn clothes showing off his toned biceps, painted in glossed sweat along with black ashes and scratches. If Kai had time to admire, he totally would.

‘Chanyeol, do you know how to clean the rust off the engine’, Kai questions, tapping Chanyeol’s shoulder, seeing the cyborg munching on some scrap food they found lying in the kitchen. Chanyeol stops, his irises zooming in as he searches for the information on his database. He opens a video memory of Suho using citric acid whilst he cleans the pans in the back whilst they still lived in the MAMA Bar.

‘Citric’, he replies, his eyes zooming back out, Kai looking over at Sehun, ordering him to look around for whatever Chanyeol said.

‘Citric acid? I don’t think Baekhyun would have that’

‘Just look around, he might have some stashed somewhere’

Why would he?’, Sehun faces Kai with a questioning look, the three of them stuck right at the bottom of the ship, in the waste and damp pipes.

‘Because he’s a scavenger and this is his ship. He’s going to have some’, Kai orders the rookie soldier to get a move on, Sehun being the one to carry all the heavy parts they would find along the way. Chanyeol observes the way Kai so nonchalantly walked beside Sehun who was clearly struggling but not even offering a helping hand.

‘You should really show trust and friendship as a Lieutenant to his inferiors’, Chanyeol points out, catching up with them.

‘Oh? How so?’, Kai didn’t take Chanyeol’s comment, but he was curious enough to entertain the cyborg for a little while.

‘For once you’re not supposed to boss them around like that, act like their equal and be a good mentor’

‘That’s Chen’s job’, Kai rolls his eyes, turning a corner and grabbing a spare pipe and adding it onto the pile, forcing Sehun to stop and try to fit everything in his arms. Chanyeol sees him and gives a disappointed look at Kai before they continue to walk.

‘Chen needs a second man to make sure that everything is okay’

‘Why don’t you be his second hand man if that’s all you want to yap about’, Kai cuts off Chanyeol before he starts lecturing him just like how his father and everyone else he’s met has lectured him before, ‘I don’t need a cyborg to tell me what to do’, Kai tells Chanyeol off before they enter a flight of stairs, ‘Now can you go back to the front and tell Chen and Xiumin that we have most of the parts’

‘We still don’t have citric acid’, Sehun calls out, Chanyeol already walking up the flight of stairs, leaving Kai and Sehun behind to start building the base.

‘I’ll ask Baekhyun’

‘Sure you will, why don’t you give him a little kiss whilst you’re at it’, Kai shouts out, whistling to Chanyeol and winking playfully at him.

‘Grow up Kai’

 

D.O is caged inside the ship, his arms bleeding and bruised, his eyes bloodshot, hair sweating and greasy. He had no idea how long he’d been wrapped in darkness but it felt like an eternity too long. The men in charge of keeping an eye on him had also found standing around a little too boring, so every so often, they’d grab a knife and start drawing on D.O’s skin like he was paper, using him as their toy to punch around as they wait for their next order. He felt every pain surge through his body with every kick and punch. He prayed every second that it’ll end soon, that the knife carving around his neck would dig in a little too deep and cut his throat. It’ll be easier than to be tortured every second of the day.

‘I still don’t see what Kai sees in him’, he hears the men whisper behind his back, his hands tied together and his weight becoming heavy until he falters to the floor due to his weakness. It felt foreign, almost impossible for him to feel weak, but every since his powers were taken away from him, that’s all he ever knows.

‘Maybe Kai has bad taste’

D.O couldn’t help but laugh at the continuous mention of Kai’s name. In actual fact, now that he’s thinking about it, it’s Kai’s fault that he’s in this mess. Everyone thinks that they’re romantically linked after the Ex’act incident and now he’s stuck in this mess, being used as nothing more but bait to lure the lieutenant in.

It’ll never work. D.O knows Kai well enough that the alien wasn’t going to waste the time that they don’t have in the first place to come and fetch him. He decided to leave them in the first place, so why should they come and save him?

Maybe it was his fault. Maybe he shouldn’t stay in his home planet like what his parents told him to instead of dreaming a stupid dream he can’t achieve. Being an overachiever was something D.O brought out himself. He should’ve stayed contented with fixing farm machines.

Now, because of his stupid dream, he’d rather be dead than alive.

 

 

‘We need to hurry up, can’t you try to upload the reactor already?’, Kai commands Sehun as they spend hours building the small spaceship which by the looks of the guide Chen gave them wouldn’t even be enough to fit two people, which means they had to reshape everything so at least two aliens can squeeze in.

‘I can’t do that right now, the lower deck is not stable enough to withstand the reactor’s heat’, Sehun calls out, taking off his jacket as he feels the heat drenching through his clothes, his forehead beading sweat already. Kai, unlike Chen, is good at making people tensed, Sehun working on three different things at the same time whilst Kai was sat in the corner with an old computer, typing something which deemed to be less important than what Sehun was doing.

‘Well, by the time Xiumin and Chen comes back, they’re expecting an anatomy of the ship and we haven’t even done that’

‘Why don’t you build the engine and save time? I can’t do all of it’, Sehun shouts back informally, shocking Kai as he looks up and gazes strongly at the rookie soldier, all jokes aside.

‘Do you speak to your Lieutenant like that?’, Kai’s joking tone is long gone, his voice deep and serious, one which caught Sehun off guard and made him freeze in mid-motion.

‘You think what I’m doing here is useless?’

‘Well you’re not building the ship are you?’

‘That’s because I’m planning what to do once we actually get there’, Kai picks out a scrap piece of metal and throws it at Sehun, ‘You think building a ship and flying over there will save D.O? No, Iris is a sneaky one and not only do we need a plan we need a backup plan, just in case’

‘And what’s your plan?’, Sehun asks, wiping the sweat from his forehead and leaning on the ship, taking a sip from his drink, observing the way Kai continues to type away in the old computer Baekhyun gave him.

‘Iris is Captain in one of the most intricate ships in the galaxy, it has high speed, multiple weapon storages and decks of supplies which can last them years if they’re ever stranded anywhere, plus multiple sensors which can allocate any moving object from a million mile radius’

‘So, he has one of the best ships in the galaxy, we all know that’

‘Yes, but what they don’t know is that after Suho stopped being the Captain, the ship fell onto me for a bit before it was allocated to a new Captain’, Kai raises his brow playfully, one which Sehun picks up straight away straightening as he waits for Kai to explain himself further.

‘What did you do with the ship?’

‘Nothing’, Kai states, ‘I was just studying its anatomy and I found a few shield defenders which manage to deflect the sensors…’, Kai continues to type something before pressing enter, smiling to himself as they both hear the printer starting up, Sehun gazing down at the sheer glass which the printer was producing at a slow rate, ‘which means I can sneak past them without anyone knowing’

Sehun was surprised, honestly shocked to see Kai working the way he is now. It’s been the first time since the spoilt lieutenant had acted serious and the rookie was not only shock but impressed. He wonders why Kai doesn’t show this side of himself to everyone, he’d surely be respected more. The buzzing of the printer continues on to producing perfectly sliced shields out of scraps from Baekhyun’s scraps.

‘You better hurry up because I want to fit in these shields as soon as possible’, Kai jumps from his seat, closing the computer and clapping his hands together, ‘Plus the reactor needs to work for the shields to work, so get to it’

‘Yes sir’, Sehun calls out, picking up his screwdriver and getting back to work, smiling when Kai approaches him, also grabbing a tool and bending down to his knees, screwing tightly the new parts of the ship and measuring the rest.

 

 

Baekhyun sleeps at the front of the ship, looking out into the galaxy with his pet on his lap, also napping. Baekhyun, despite the other's determination, still believes that nothing good will come out of trying to save the small planet alien, refusing to help anyone when asked for it. His body was still seated on the pilot seat, waking up once in a while to look out into the stars, seeing how each planet align to create something so complex. It was in these moments where Baekhyun appreciated floating at the edge of the universe, just starting from a distance and admiring the beauty of the landscape without dipping in and realising that the cracks are more prominent the closer it gets.

‘You should at least help Kai and Sehun downstairs’, Suho walks in, sitting on the co-pilot and making himself comfortable which Baekhyun should allow, but he got used to Suho sitting next to him.

‘I’m not breaking a sweat when I know this is useless’, Baekhyun calls out, a statement which didn’t sit well with Suho at all, his eyes looking at Baekhyun, shaking his head in disbelief that such an alien could even exist.

‘This is an innocent alien’s life in danger’, Suho points out, ‘Don’t you even care at the slightest?’, Suho didn’t want to be angry, it was the time for that, but the way Baekhyun relaxes into his seat and refuses to even be worried for D.O was something he couldn’t fathom. Till this very day, he stays up late and thinks about his old crew, he thinks about his failure as a Captain for not even protecting them, he feel guilt every time he hears Lay’s voice through the cracking speaker, guilt at the thought that his partner was all alone without him to protect, yet here he was, sharing and driving the same ship as a man who’d rather die alone than feel one second of remorse for another person.

‘It’s not like I don’t want to save D.O’, Baekhyun opens his eyes and straighten up in his seat, sensing Suho’s accusing tone towards him, ‘I’m saying that there’s no hope. We’re going to get arrested as best case scenario and I highly doubt Chen or Kai will be in any power to lift my bounty any time soon which means I’m the first to die out of everyone here’

‘Why can’t you believe that our plan just might work? We have the best of the best in this very ship’

‘You all work for the EXO Army. I can never rely on any of you’, Baekhyun points out, allowing his cat to jump from his lap as they both stir awake from Suho’s presence.

‘We’re more than capable. We come from prestige and intense training and-’

‘And yet you still fail to save my planet’, Baekhyun stands up, not wanting to entertain Suho anymore, rolling his sleeves up and picking up his half-finished drink, ‘I don’t trust anyone who’s failed to do the one thing they’re trained to do’ Baekhyun states to Suho before disappearing from the front, walking past Chen and Xiumin and into one of the rooms at the back, gulping down the last of his drinks before dropping onto the bed.

‘Oh, I didn’t know this was your room’, Baekhyun only noticed Chanyeol’s presence when he turns to see the cyborg sitting at the end of the room, his hand holding a cup of diesel whilst he had a plate of stale bread resting on his lap.

‘Are you recharging?’

‘LOEY didn’t create any charging buds in me so I cannot charge, but I can refuel’, Chanyeol holds up the cup. Baekhyun nods, looking up at the ceiling and staring at nothing, leaving just silence between him and Chanyeol.

‘I’m sorry’, Chanyeol randomly says, making Baekhyun turn to him in confusion.

‘For what?’

‘Your planet. I heard it was a beautiful place’, Baekhyun rolls his eyes, turning to steal a glance, only to find out that Chanyeol was still staring at him, creepily might he add, as he just sat there and stared.

‘Stop eavesdropping on my conversations’, Baekhyun tells him off, figuring out that Chanyeol must’ve been using his incredibly complex sound system to hear through the walls. He was made by one of the best mechanics and inventors, so it was only plausible that the cyborg could hear his heartbeat too.

‘It’s a shame it was destroyed’

‘Yeah’ Baekhyun chuckles at the absurdity that his life has come to. He had barely, if not, never have spoken about where he had come from and about his old life before he became a scavenger, but now he’d spoken about it twice in less than ten minutes, ‘I’m over it really’, Baekhyun breaks the conversation before Chanyeol goes diving into something he never wishes to talk about again.

‘No you’re not’, Chanyeol responds, not even with a hint of solidarity that he punches Baekhyun with that statement, ‘Suho isn’t over his crew dying and losing his ship, I highly doubt you would be over your own planet dying’

‘Suho and I are different’

‘Are you really?’

‘You know what, why don’t you just shut up and drink your diesel’, Baekhyun’s voice was no more pressing and angry, a tone which the cyborg wasn’t used to, so he shuts his mouth and keeps away from Baekhyun.

The room is silent, apart from the tapping of pipes and the humming of the engines which thankfully continues to work. Baekhyun turns on his back and continues to look at the ceiling, praying that sleep would come to him so he could avoid anyone else who wants to have a go at him. Looking at the scratches and stains on his ceiling and the monotone coloured room, his mind rests on the murmuring sound coming from the front area of the ship along with the vibrating feeling on the floor, probably because of Kai and Sehun working below them. He’s never felt the ship come to life. It’s always been just him in this big spaceship, travelling by himself and to no particular destination, just floating between galaxies. He knows no one but the empty space of the universe. And maybe that could help them.

‘Maybe we can attack him in his blind spot’, Baekhyun whispers to himself, recalling the times he had slipped past galactic guards with their securing spaceship, scanning the highways of any odd behaviours. He had learnt how to slip past them and made sure his ship passed through undetected.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Chanyeol, can you scan to see the specific coordinates of where the Boomerang is?’ Baekhyun stands up, sitting on the mattress and looking at Chanyeol dead in the face, ‘we might have a chance to save D.O and get our asses out of there in time’

‘Are you thinking of another plan?’

‘Not another plan… Maybe just an addition’

‘And what would that be?’

‘We’re going on a small stop… On planet Earth’

 

 

‘So how is it there?’, Suho asks, having the front wheel to himself and giving himself this chance to connect with Lay again. It had been too overwhelming of a situation for him to fully wrap around his head that his partner was alive and well, he wanted to update Lay with nothing but good news but seeing as he’s balancing between the edges of the universe he can only listen to Lay’s updates.

‘I have a human job and have made a few earnings for me to live here comfortably’, Lay continues on, the voice static and barely audible, but he did hear the familiar softness in Lay’s voice and the soft way he chuckles between conversations. It had filled Suho with a sense of relief but also a sense of longing as he wishes to meet with Lay, to see him in real life and see how he’s truly been over the years.

‘I miss you’, Suho suddenly says aloud, something that he didn’t think he’d do and he wishes the system didn’t pick it up and it seems as though it didn’t since Lay continue to speak over his soft whisper. Suho couldn’t hear anything but static now, the further the ship goes around, the further Lay’s vice gets. He wanted to stop the ship, just to spend one more minute hearing Lay’s voice but he sees the signal lowering Easter every second and he knew it was time to end his conversation with the doctor.

One day. When he finds the Red force and gains his powers back, he’ll visit Lay on earth and maybe even persuade him to come back. One day, if he survives, he’ll come running back to Lay, just as he had promised all those years ago.

‘Lay, the signal’s getting weak, I need to go now’, Suho interrupts, already regretting the silence followed as Lay stops talking for a moment before agreeing.

‘Yeah, okay’, Lay says, his voice barely audible, the both of them understanding that it was time for them to end their conversation. Suho didn’t know if his hands stopped moving or he found it hard to lift his finger and press the end call. He instead waiting until the static became too much that he can’t hear Lay’s voice saying goodbye. He waited until their distance broke them apart again before he ends the call.

‘I miss you too’, Suho’s eyes widen at the last words Lay spoke before the signal is cut off completely, with nothing more but static sounds speaking back to him. He feels his chest become heavy, his breathing fastened as he shuts off the communicator. He leans his arm on the desk and rests his head down, closing his eyes and he tries not to let his emotions get the better of him. He’ll meet him again one day. He will. Because he misses him.

 

 

‘You’re really out to make this work’ Sehun points out as he observes the way Kai was fitting in the small computer inside the ship that was halfway done at this point thanks to Chanyeol who had come down to help with the building. Baekhyun added a few snide words in the shape of the ship, describing it as trash, but Sehun paid no mind to it, and nor did Kai by the looks of it. He’d never seen Kai look more determined even as a former General of a prestigious army.

‘Are you and D.O actually…’, Sehun didn’t have the confidence to finish the question, but Kai picked up on the suspicion and turns to face him.

‘You think someone like D.O would fall for me?’, Kai chuckles, taking off his gloves and wiping the dark stain which made it’s way over to his arms, wiping it with the gloves before discarding it, ‘That alien might be odd, but he has sense, a logic that throws people like me off their rails’

‘Are you saying you’re not his type?’, Sehun says, leaning on the wall and also taking a rest.

‘I know, surprising right?’, Kai laughs, ‘But I understand. I mean the last time we were together we were running away from my father’s men whilst being powerless. He also gets kidnapped for being misunderstood as my lover so he probably hates me with a passion now’, Kai points out to which Sehun notices something solemn, a hint of regret to which Sehun picked up once again since Kai was never the type to show emotion other than obnoxious satisfaction over his rather small successes.

‘You’re feeling guilty, is that it?’

‘Well, can’t an alien feel guilty? I did put him in that place’, Kai raises a brow and playfully laughs it off but it’s only in these moments that Sehun has noticed there was a crack in the usual charismatic smile, something which was hidden away beneath the surface.

Sehun had enough respect for Kai as the next soldier, but even a trainee knew of Kai’s reputation, or lack thereof, as a slacker and a lazy asshole. He also believed in it after seeing Kai slacking off work and also spending god knows how many weeks he stuck in a ship with no powers. He’d also seen glimpses of Kai walking to and fro funeral ceremonies after a long battle, soldiers piled up in rows, placed in their beautifully made coffins, wrapped around in flags, a patriotic ceremony mourning for the lives lost for the greater good of their planet. He’d see Kai walking in, paying his respects and bowing to each family who had lost. He would almost respect him if he also didn’t witness what he would do after the ceremony, running off to leave General Jongdae to clear up the hall and talk to everyone else, commandeering the next ship to run away to the next brothel he sees. He’d seen too much of Kai’s asshole self that it was surprising he even had it in him to feel guilty.

‘So, what are you going to do if these deflectors don’t work and you’re caught?’

‘Well, I guess I’ll just bargain my way out then’, Kai nods, taking a swing of ale to which he grimaces at the off taste.

‘What are you going to bargain him with?’

‘Myself, obviously’

Sehun looks shocked, more so now that Kai has even uttered those words.

‘Yourself? How are you even going to do that?’

‘He said he wanted to meet with me, I assume to kill me for breaking my promise to him’

‘And you’re okay with that?’

‘I’m powerless anyway. Not like I have much to live for’

This certainly did not sound like Kai in the slightest. One minute he was playful, the next, he’s talking about a suicide mission so nonchalantly.

‘You can’t just go into battle willing to die’

‘Then what kind of soldier would I be?’, Kai points out, placing the beer bottle on the table and folding his arms, ‘If you need to learn one thing from the academy, then I suggest you learn this’, Kai looks at Sehun, menacingly, his eyes wrapped in darkness as he had never seen anything else, ‘You step into that battlefield in hopes that you die. A soldier is not a sword, they’re an armour, a shield to protect the lives of the innocent. You are not there to kill in hopes of surviving, you’re there to protect in hopes that the next generation will’

It’s silent. Sehun can only look at his hands which awkwardly plays with itself as he avoids the heavy stare given by the lieutenant.

‘Then why do you come back from battles alive?’

‘I ask myself that question every day’, Kai sighs, this time being the one to feel small and vulnerable not in the slightest like his usual charismatic self. Sehun felt conflicted to who Kai really is now. He’d seen all sides of him and all different from the other yet he could not pin down which one the real Kai was and which one was an act. He was starting to think Kai didn’t know either.

 

****

 

‘So, what you’re saying is whilst we lead the EXO army to think that we’re all in the Boomerang, we jump back into your ship and use your blind spot to escape to earth?’, Chanyeol asks as he looks down at Baekhyun, more so the coordinates that he was typing on his computer. He sees Baekhyun wearing glasses which is honestly not something he’d see the aliens wear. The both of them are sitting on Baekhyun’s bed, analysing the placement of the Boomerang and how they could possibly sneak from behind without going unnoticed.

‘The Boomerang is big enough to hide us from the EXO army’

‘Yes, that is if they’re all facing one direction. What if they have the ship completely surrounded?’

Baekhyun had thought of that, which is why he zoomed into the screen, seeing the ship floating in the Milky Way and smiling to himself.

‘I’ll disguise my ship to look like a debris orbiting around, we can pass off as trash and go unnoticed’, Baekhyun points out and for once, Chanyeol can’t counter argue with that, ‘Now, I suggest, we plummet the small ship towards the back entrance to which Kai and I can sneak inside and-’

‘Hold on one second, you and Kai?’, Chanyeol interrupts Baekhyun in the midst of brainstorming, holding onto Baekhyun’s arm, ‘Who’s going to pilot this ship?’

‘Suho. He’s a captain and a pretty good pilot’

‘But he doesn’t know where we’re going. You refused to tell the rest about our backup plan’

‘I’ll put the coordinates in so it’ll automatically drive to where I want it to go’

‘But…’, Chanyeol tries to think of something else to argue with, but his moment of hesitation was enough for an idea to seep through to Baekhyun’s mind, the alien tilting his head and observing Chanyeol before quickly smiling to himself.

‘Are you trying to get me to stay here because you don’t want me to leave?’

‘It’s dangerous out there’

‘But you’re okay with sending Kai to his death?’

‘He caused this mess in the first place and I-’, Chanyeol stops in mid-sentence when he feels Baekhyun move slightly closer to him, his breathing hitching when he found that the space between him and the alien was practically non-existent. He watches how Baekhyun adjusts himself to face Chanyeol, straddling on his lap and resting his hands on his shoulders.

It was too close that Chanyeol is reminded of the time that he and Baekhyun had sex which he vowed he’d forget and won’t do again. But Baekhyun’s lips were too inviting and he couldn’t help but lean in and kiss them. To his surprise, Baekhyun didn’t break away nor did he protest. He allowed the cyborg to kiss him, even parting his lips as an invite for him to lean in and take more. Baekhyun easily wraps his arms around Chanyeol’s neck and brings himself closer to Chanyeol, a euphoric atmosphere of lust and pleasure which runs through Baekhyun’s veins, leaving his thoughts to the side and allowing his actions to do the talking.

‘I thought you said we’re only doing this once’, Chanyeol gasps after their lips parted for a moment, his eyes glowing red and his fingers twitching in overdrive.

‘Well, I just found out that we could die any minute from now and I seriously don’t want to waste my time anymore’, Baekhyun whispers, leaning in closer to kiss the Chanyeol’s neck, rocking himself back and forth, ‘So I suggest we make the most of our borrowed time’

Chanyeol allowed Baekhyun to ravish his skin, fingernails tearing at his clothes until his torso was bare, Baekhyun gliding down, leaving trails of kisses, bruising him in the process. Chanyeol was just about to lace his fingers between Baekhyun’s shirt, tugging at it when he hears a banging noise.

‘For fuck’s sake, we’re in the middle of a mission and you still have time to fuck?!’, Chanyeol looks out the door before it shuts close to see Chen flailing his arms and shouting at the rest of the members.

‘My ship, my rules!’, Baekhyun shouts back, not even turning to face the door as he continues to stare at Chanyeol, ‘Eyes on me’, Baekhyun twists the cyborg’s chin so that he’s facing him again.

 

 

‘God, can this place not get any worse’, Chen shakes his head in disapproval, moving back into the main ship to where Suho and Xiumin were. They had just finished sending off their final plan to Kai and Sehun downstairs and now all that’s left to do is wait for the two soldiers to finish everything up.

‘Let him. He’s been cranky for a while, it’s good to get some of it out of his system’, Suho points out, drinking the disgusting ale that Baekhyun had in his ship whilst flipping through Xiumin’s books.

‘Plus, Chanyeol is also wetting himself for Baekhyun. You can’t mess with the lovebirds’, Xiumin also decides to add in, allowing Chen to sit next to him as the three sit together, breathing in the cold silence of the ship, the only sound coming from the hums of the engine and the beeping of the controllers which Suho didn’t bother to fix since the ship was already in the midst of a breakdown. They see exLLE sleeping soundlessly on Baekhyun’s chair and they felt at peace for once.

‘What do you think we’d be doing had the black market hasn’t been attacked?’, Chen questions to fill the silence between them.

‘Probably arrested for gaining access to this book’, Xiumin lifts up the old text which was banned from EXO Planet and the General nods.

‘I would probably be the one to arrest you for that’, Chen points out, chuckling as he shares a joke between the Rabbi, something that he didn’t think would happen since the Rabbis were never a huge fan of the Generals or Captain of the military.

‘I’d probably get fired from the bar’, Suho joins in, looking back at his life before the past few weeks, going back to the time where he would wipe the tables, kick drunks out and get into constant fights with criminals and also losing since they weren’t scared of him anymore. He was no longer Captain Suho of the Boomerang; he was just Suho. Xiumin smiles empathetically at the former Captain, looking back down on the book and reading the different pages and making notes.

‘Found anything interesting?’, Chen asks, finding the talks of their old past a little depressing, taking a look at the brown and rotten pages.

‘Nothing much then the usual history book bullshit’, Xiumin adds on, a bit frustrated with his findings, ‘You know for a book that’s banned, I’d thought there was a secret hidden in here, something that our colonies wanted to wipe from the history books, but nothing. It’s literally a copy and paste of the other books I have read’

‘Maybe the secret is hidden in the book’, Suho straightens from his chair, grabbing the book and sliding it towards him, ‘Whoever wrote this book knows that it didn’t want to be read, so they must’ve hidden it between the words’

‘You mean a code?’, Xiumin tilts head to the side, looking down at the book, ‘I didn’t think of that’

‘But what kind of code do you think they put?’

‘We can always check the first word of each page. Maybe it’ll form something’, Suho suggests, turning to the first age, borrowing Xiumin’s notebook, beginning to write the first words in one page, blocking it together in hopes that it will form a sentence.

_The. Eighth. Second. Coming. The. Age._

‘I don’t think that sentence makes any sense’, Chen reads it out loud, finding that Suho’s suggestion was made futile by the random words being clustered together. Suho stops writing after reading it himself, sighing at the failed outcome.

‘Wait, didn’t it say that most attacks happened during a full moon?’, Xiumin sparks up after remembering what he had read from the previous books about the Red Force and their fighting tactics’

‘What about it?’

‘There’s a nursery song just based on it’, Xiumin adds on, going back to the first page, ‘Didn’t you sing it when you were kids?’

‘You mean _27 red days?’,_ Chen and Suho bot reply to him simultaneously, ‘That’s just a nursery rhyme’

‘Yes, but do you not remember the lyrics?’

‘Of course, we do. We use to sing it before our troops were released into the battlefield too’, Chen rolls his eyes, as if the answer was obvious, ‘It’s a song warning everyone to run and hide during the 27th day of each month because of the rising red moon’

‘Exactly’, Xiumin points to Chen whilst also writing down something on his notes, flipping through the book as fast as he can, skimming through each word before he starts writing something down again.

‘And what exactly have you figured out?’

‘It’s not every first word’, Xiumin tells them ‘It’s every 27th word, a message about the Red Force, specifically targeted for us since we cower in fear at the sound of that number back in the day’

‘So… is there a message?’

‘Wait. I need to finish the whole book’, Suho and Chen watch Xiumin as he speeds through each page, taking note of every 27th word until his eyes are sore and his fingers are dipped in ink, Suho and Chen waiting with intense curiosity.

‘Done’, Xiumin breathes out dropping the pen and closing the end of the book, Chen and Suho standing up behind him and looking down his notebook to find scribbles and messy writing forming sentences, a message which read:

 

_We feared_ _to lose the freedom in the maze of routine. The warm light that brightened the darkness was only visible with our eyes shut. The beauty of the innocent glaciers now turned to tears of sorrow. We now stood at the era of loss. In the cold virtual world, we were cast_ _in the fierce waves of lies, the course of nature was ignored._

_The moon turns red, the day when the sun and the moon drifted apart, you and I could no longer be together. Through the endless night and the stars, until the day we meet again._

 

‘Meet again?”, Chen asks, rereading the same passage over and over again, ‘Who are they talking about?’

‘This sounds more like a love story than a warning message’, Suho puts on his glasses and rereads it again, ‘It doesn’t mention anything important about the Red Force and its intent’

‘Maybe it does’, Xiumin adds, grabbing another book he stole from the library, opening it up to a page he had read, ‘Check this out’

 

_When the skies and the grounds were one the legends, through their forces nurtured the tree of life. An eye of the red force created the evil which coveted the heart of the tree of life, and the heart slowly grew dry. To tend and embrace the heart of the tree of life, the legends hereby divide the tree in half and hide each side. Hence, time is overturned and space turns askew. The forces divide into two and create two suns that look alike into two worlds that seem alike. The legends travel apart. The legends shall now see the same sky but shall stand on different grounds, shall stand on the same ground but shall see different skies. The day the grounds be kept a single file before one sky in two worlds that seem alike, the legends will greet each other. The day the red force is purified, the forces will reunite into one perfect root, a new world shall open._

 

‘You’re reading myths and legends?’, Chen rolls his eyes, laughing at the Rabbi for connecting two different things, ‘We all know the Red Force is real but those were stories which were made by soldiers whilst they feared for their lives during the war’

‘But there can be some truths into it’

‘No there isn’t, because one, there is no tree of life and two there are no legends sent out to protect it’, Chen continues to point out, not even believing in the ridiculous fairy tale that Xiumin was reading to them.

‘What if this book was written by one of the legends and sent to another. Myth says that they can no longer meet each other, being separated and leading different lives whilst still protecting whatever this tree of life is’

‘We don’t know about the tree of life and we all accepted the fact that the Red Force was just a bunch of discontented aliens who started a revolution, what’s that got anything to do with the tree of life?’

‘Just a bunch of aliens? Chen, they wreaked havoc and continue to scare the EXO military, one of the most sophisticated and strong armies in the galaxy. They can’t just be a bunch of aliens’

‘Okay, they’re strong savage aliens. What’s the difference?’

‘The government is hiding something and they want it. They’ve been attacking every vital city and they’re only going to continue’

‘What if… Hypothetically… the legends were real’

‘They’d be dead since this was written a hundred years before us’

‘But their roles are passed on to their heir’, Suho stands up, Xiumin also standing up and following Suho, ‘There’s probably new legends as we speak’, Chen looks forward to where Suho and Xiumin are standing, seeing the way they watch the galaxy unfolding towards them, as if piecing everything together.

‘Are you saying that there are legends living right now to protect the tree of life which the Red Force wants?’

‘Yes. But with our society erasing this part of our history, they wouldn’t know that they’re legends. They would think that they’re just normal passing aliens’

‘Look this is insane. We still don’t know what the tree of life is and-’, Chen pauses before he can continue to object to whatever stupid theory Xiumin and Suho had up in their mind thinking back to their last information that they had garnered was that they were after their orbs including Baekhyun’s. They travelled all the way to gain access to Baekhyun’s powers. The Red Force only took theirs for convenience since they were at the wrong place at the wrong time, but there was evidence that the Red Force went after Baekhyun specifically, ‘Do you think Baekhyun is a legend?’

Suho and Xiumin turn to face Chen, their eyes telling the General that they had already made that conclusion.

‘Fucking great. Now, who the fuck else is a legend?’

 

 

‘Are you finished?’

‘Yeah!’, Kai shouts back, standing up after fixing the busted engines and reviving it so it can carry a small ship, ‘I think we’re good to go. Tell the others to come down so we can start this thing’, Kai orders Sehun, waiting for the rookie soldier to obey his orders, Kai’s eyes fixated on the ship and reassuring himself that everything is intact and prepared. He didn’t want any malfunctions to happen whilst he’s driving it.

‘Hey, Kai’, Sehun calls out before he leaves the room, ‘I just want to say I’m sorry’

‘Sorry?’

‘I doubted you and believed the rumours about you… I just wanna say I’m sorry’

‘Well, don’t be’, Kai points out, smiling at Sehun, ‘Most of them are true anyway’

‘Aren’t you tired’, Sehun slowly approaches the lieutenant, not frightened of the consequences since there wasn’t any. They were floating in the middle of nowhere, Kai can’t do anything to him.

‘Tired of what?’

‘Of being called useless when you’re not’, Sehun asks, ‘The only thing people worry about is honour and being remembered as someone great, but why do you not care about that?’

‘Because when you’ve lived my life, you stopped caring about all that’, Kai sighs, leaning on the wall and allowing Sehun to walk towards him until they’re facing each other with not much space between them, ‘You teach yourself how to cope with life and move on and if that means not caring about others around you, then so be it’

Kai didn’t anticipate it, but Sehun raises himself forward, giving Kai a tight hug and leaning his head on the alien’s chest.

‘Woah, stand down rookie’, Kai raises his hand, not wanting this intimacy whatsoever, looking down to try and get Sehun off him, but it seems like the soldier didn’t want to let him go.

‘I think you’re a pretty great soldier’, Sehun says, his voice muffled due to Kai’s shirt.

‘Thanks kid’. Kai says, awkwardly trying to pry Sehun off him. He feels Sehun only tighten his arms around him, leaving him breathless, ‘Come on kid, I get it, you like me, now can you let me go?’

‘Sorry’, Sehun finally backs away at Kai’s command, looking down to his feet as the sudden rush of embarrassment grazes through him after realising what he had done, ‘I’ll go get the rest’

Kai couldn’t say another word since Sehun was practically sprinting out of the room, but he couldn’t help but form a small smile on his face as he watches the young soldier runoff. He didn’t want to admit it, but he found Sehun cute.

 

 

‘Okay, so I’m going to need you to follow these coordinates and that will take you straight to where the Boomerang is’

‘Why the sudden change of mind? I thought you were coming with me?’, Kai asks as he sits himself down on the small ship, more like a pod than anything, using old keyboards and other junk as his controller, even a hanger as a lever, but he couldn’t complain.

‘I need to be in my ship at all times’. Baekhyun states to which is followed by a cough made by Chen as the General pushes Chanyeol to stand next to him. Suho could only stifle his giggle when Baekhyun turns to glare.

‘I can come’, Sehun volunteers but Xiumin tugs him back.

‘We don’t need extra weight on the ship. It’s already vulnerable and I think it’s a good idea that we’ll be sending just one person’

‘But what if he needs back up?’

‘Don’t worry darling, I can take care of myself’, Kai winks at him before shutting his ship, a clear glass which was supposed to be his deflectors covering him from the rest as they stand beside the ship, Baekhyun giving Ka the thumbs up before opening the back of his ship, creating a space for the small ship to fly out.

‘We’ll be right behind your back. The coordinates after this one should bring you back towards us no matter what, okay?”, Baekhyun taps on the glass, raising Kai’s attention to which he just nods at him.

‘Come back alive please!’, Chen shouts as soon as they hear the ranging of the engines, humming loudly along with the loud busting of the metal walls shaking. The ship was not stable whatsoever and Sehun and the rest of them can only hope that it was strong enough to safely bring Kai and D.O back.

Kai, unlike everyone else, felt ease, smiling at them and even giving Baekhyun and Suho a joking wink, one which made everyone laugh as they watch the ship begin to hover, descending out of the ship and into the highway. Their eyes stay watching the ship as it flies further away from them, the ship getting smaller and smaller until it’s nothing but a speck.

‘Do you think Kai will be able to bring D.O back?’, Chanyeol stops the silence from eating them as Baekhyun closes the gate.

‘Too late to be asking that question now’

 

 

D.O stands to his feet, looking down to see scars, still new and fresh, dried blood painted all over his body. His hands were shackled together but there was at least light in the cell now. He had seen many of the Captain’s guards walking in to check on him and forcing food down his throat for him to stay alive. He hadn’t seen the Captain since the time he was brought over to meet him and he refuses to speak to him in under any circumstances.

He had been questioned whether he was truly Kai’s lover and he thought of telling the truth and saying he wasn’t but despite the accusation being the reason why he’s here, it’s also the reason why they haven’t killed him yet. Had they found out that he was no value to them anymore, they would slit his throat without a second thought. He nodded once he was tortured into confessing if he had any relations with Kai and that was more than enough for them.

His eyes stare at the bland walls of the cell room, the cold ground freezing his skin and he hisses when he moves and his wounds would pierce him another surge of pain.

He had hoped to die and wished for it every night, but every time he opens his eyes to find that he is still breathing, he couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief. His mind keeps going back and forth, contemplating if he truly wants to die or if he would rather get tortured and wait for the rescue he knew wasn’t going to come.

Kai wasn’t an evil person. Had the message reached him, he had enough faith in the foolish alien to at least bargaining his freedom, but they were stuck in the middle. Kai is powerless, after the Red Force and the whole galaxy knows he’s alive and is after him. Kai’s hands were also shackled, and he high doubts anyone else in the group would be willing to walk straight into the death trap just to rescue him. He hated himself for even separating himself with the rest of them. Despite their odd relationship, it was better than being alone, he had aliens he could carry his burdens with as they sail across the universe in search of their powers.

Now he’s all alone with nothing but his own skin and even that was drenched in scars and blood.

 

 

Kai looks around the area then back down to the coordinates. This ship was not fast enough, but he knew that Baekhyun couldn’t go any further into the Milky Way without being detected. He needed to be patient and wait for the ship to go closer to the Boomerang.

This gave him time alone to be with himself which is something he never wants. He should’ve taken Sehun’s offer to come with him, but he knew that will slow the ship down.

He closes his eyes and breathes every other second, trying to relax as he lays his hand on the lever, feeling the vibration of the ship and the humming of the engines, focusing all of his attention on that instead.

But every other second, he feels something else. The burning of his skin, the tearing of flesh and the smell of blood as he walks around the dead battlefield, with his gun resting on his hands as he looks around the planet he had failed to save. He couldn’t do anything else but to order his men to retreat, trying to save as many soldiers as he can whilst directing the rescue team to salvage as much injured civilians as he can.

His body freezes as his mind traps him in the same place as he was trying to get away, form the dust of the old planet, the sky blood red with the carnage of the city becoming nothing more than the rubble beneath him. His eyes look down on the small girl clutching her toy, her eyes wide open in fear and shock, blood dripping down her mouth as she lay dead. Kai’s breathing gets heavy. There are more of them. More children laid dead and unrescued, men and women who had waited for them to save them now nothing more than a body count.

He leaves his guards to clean everything up, disappearing like the dust which flies around the broken planet, leaving everything behind.

‘Ah!’, Kai wakes up screaming, the beeping of the screen telling him to wake up as his eyes adjust to the light, seeing that he was nearing the coordinates. He sighs in relief, looking up ahead of him in search of the Boomerang.

It wasn’t hard to spot it. It was one of the biggest and most obnoxious looking ships in the galaxy, slugged in red and hues of metallic silver running through it. He couldn’t wait to ask Suho why such a design, but what he needed to do right now is to stir the other way to where the back of the ship is.

He had every idea of what the ship looks like seeing as he took care of it for a few months before it was given to a new owner. He had no idea where Iris would place a prisoner in since the ship wasn’t made to have prison cells but he had an inkling of an idea that D.O would be placed right at the back of the ship where all the spare rooms were, empty spaces for the doctor to use as his healing space.

Stirring the ship right at the back of the ship he turns on hid deflectors in hopes that the signals will not pick him up and just past him as nothing more than a debris passing by. He can imagine that there are a few EXO ships roaming around these areas after the messages which practically points to the direction to where Kai will be, his father will be adamant in getting him back. He just hopes that the ships won’t be too smart to see him quickly typing in his laptop, connecting to one of the magnetic frames of the ship and opening it in one go. Kai can only smile to himself as he stirs his small ship inside the opening. He didn’t know why Suho built the ship so that it has many useless door opening to the outside, but he didn’t have the time to judge the former Captain.

His engines were loud and he can only pray that there was no one walking around these areas of the ships. He feels the ship shake as it fails to land properly, hitting against the walls and causing the walls to dent.

‘Goddammit’, Kai hisses, feeling his head hit the side of the ship as it finally falls to the ground, almost crashing rather than landing, ‘I need to make a better break’, Kai whispers to himself. He massages his head as he opens the glass deflectors, allowing him to stand up and get out of the small ship. He looks around the room, trying to memorise where he is. It was dark, not at all what the Boomerang was built for since it was usually lit to the brightest. Iris had his own aesthetic and Kai can’t complain, but it did make it harder for him to find out where he was, having to slowly tiptoe to the door and quietly open it, peeping his head out and looking outside the hallway which was thankfully lit. The ship was too big and he knew he was going to get lost, so he looks for the aisle number which was always pasted on the end of every hallway before it leads you to the next one. He walks down, looking down on the floor in attempts to hide his face, squinting his eyes to see the number 14 posted on the hallway that he’d just past.

‘Okay, I know where I am’, Kai whispers to himself, quickening his pace as he tries to find the hallways of empty rooms, ‘Now I just need to find D.O’. He’s silent, tiptoeing and pressing his ear against every door making sure that he was still alone before opening each one, only to be disappointed to find something empty.

He paces around the ship, trying to hurry up since they didn’t have much time. He races his way to the left only to hear footsteps and soft murmuring coming the other way. He quickly opens the door and hides inside one of the empty rooms, pressing his ear on the door, trying to listen in.

‘Kai isn’t going to come. It’s been three days since the message was sent out and no signs of him’

‘He’s a teleporter. You’d never know if he’d just appear in front of you. That’s why we have at least six guards inside that boy’s room. They’ll alert us when Kai appears’

 _Great._ Kai can’t just sneak in and bust him and D.O out of here. He needs to punch his way out. That’s not going to be a good idea. It’ll only bring attention and if the EXO army picks up on this commotion, his ass will be handcuffed straight to his father. He did not need this. He looks around the room, in hopes to find something, anything’s to help him get D.O out of the ship without causing too much scene. He looks up and finally smiles o himself.

‘Air ventilation, you lifesaver’, Kai claps to himself locking the door and sliding the chair towards the nailed ventilation above him. He stands on the chair and creates a fist, punching on the opening multiple times until his knuckles were bleeding and the screws bust open. It was in this time that he manages to snake his way into the ventilation without being discovered by any of Iris’s guards.

 

 

D.O sits cross-legged, looking down at his stale bread and green slime of a soup which was given to him. His expression is filled with disgust and he squirms when he dips his bread into the substance and finds that it sticks to the bread like melted cheese. He almost gags as he puts it in his mouth and finds the taste to be more revolting than rotten meat.

‘Eat up lover boy, we still need you alive’, the guard kicks at him.

‘If Kai doesn’t come back, can’t we just kill him? It sends a warning message don’t you think?’

‘Whatever. If he doesn’t come, then this boy isn’t his lover’

‘Why would you say that?’, the other guard look at the butch one, the one who stands right next to D.O, his face menacingly looking around everywhere, as if he’s expecting something to pop up in front of him at any second.

‘Because I’ve worked with that bastard before’, the guard’s deep and loud voice continues to intimidate D.O, but he was curious at the same time, curious to see Kai in action as a lieutenant and as the Commander’s son.

‘And what’s he like in the battlefield?’

‘A fucking killer. He’s a good fighter, I’d give him that, and he sticks for his troop through thick and thin. He may be a bastard, but he’s a bastard with guts, if someone he loves is in danger, then his ass will be there’

‘So he should be here any minute now’

‘Which is why you have to keep an eye out. He’ll teleport here any minute’

D.O can only roll his eyes. Kai didn’t love him nor did he care for him so he won't is coming here any time soon and even if he is, he lost his teleportation powers which means he won’t be appearing in the middle of nowhere.

He’s about to take a second bite of the disgusting soup when he feels something landing on his head. He feels a small pain and looks down to see a ring landing on his lap. Confused, he looks around the room to see if one of the guards had thrown the ring at him, but they were all minding their business and not even looking at him. He’s about to ignore what had happened when another ring lands on his lap, this time, he manages to see that it had come from above him. His turns his head to find Kai waving at him, caged inside the air ventilation.

_What. The. Hell._

D.O opens his mouth and was about to say something when Kai hushes him, placing his finger on his lips as he points to the guards sitting next to him. D.O didn’t know how to feel, he didn’t know what to but continue to look up at Kai, seeing the way the alien tried to unscrew the opening. He didn’t know whether to scream at him for putting him in this situation or to hug him for coming back for him.

All he knew is that Kai isn’t going to be able to rescue him if the guards were still here.

He quickly thinks on the spot and spills the soup all over him.

‘Woah, what the hell’, the guards stands up when they hear D.O screaming.

‘Hot! Hot! The soup is hot!’, he continues to scream, trying to divert all their attention to him as Kai continues to unscrew.

‘What has gotten into you?’, the guards push D.O to the front and D.O made sure that all sic of them followed him until they’re in front of the room opening the door.

‘It burns! Help me!’

‘Some get him to the front and ask for a healer!’, the guards shout at each other, allowing D.O and his small figure to slip past them, using all the strength he can muster to push the rest of the guard out of the room and locking it.

‘You!’, the butch guard turns around to see D.O staring back at them from the glass door, his eyes wide in what he’d down since he was so scared of the guard just a minute ago.

‘Everyone! Go get the keys!’

D.O didn’t have time. He knew they would be back with more guards and god forbids Iris too.

‘Kai!’ He quickly turns to see that Kai had already opened the ventilation, ‘You came for me?’

‘Of course, I did. I owe you one’, Kai says whilst he stretches his arms out, ‘Now come here, I’ll help you up’

‘How did you get here?’

‘What do you mean? We built a small ship and I came to get you’

‘You… all built a ship for me?’

‘Now is not the time to be sappy D.O, now get up here so we can go’, Kai orders the alien and he did nothing but follow his orders, feeling his muscles come back to life at the thought that he was escaping this torture. He stands up on one of the chairs grabbing hold of Kai’s hands as he lifts himself up inside the ventilation which was big enough for both of them. Kai closes the frame before he can talk to D.O, ordering the alien to follow him back to the ship.

‘You built a ship? How?’

‘From Baekhyun’s junk, which means it’s not going to hold very securely’

‘That’s more than enough. I need to get out here… They were gonna kill me if you don’t come here’

‘Kill you? Now that’s not very nice’, Kai comments, turning a left and trying to remember where he crashed the ship in. He knew that it was in hallway 14 but god knows how to get there.

‘Where are the others? Are they waiting by the ship?’

‘By Baekhyun’s ship yes. The plan is to hover just by the threshold of the Milky Way and we’ll go to them’

‘But you said the ship won’t hold’

‘It’ll hold enough’, Kai points out before turning another left, ‘Yes!’, he shouts in celebration when they pass a room and see the small ship – more like a pod in D.O’s opinion – but he wasn’t going to complain now, ‘Let’s get a move on before they figure out that I’m here’

‘Is everyone else okay? Did you guys escape EX’ACT?’

‘Yeah. We’re all still alive and Baekhyun and Suho will drill you for ditching us’

‘Sorry…’, D.O feels guilt slowly rising in him but Kai didn’t allow it to fester as he kicks on the frame and jumps into the room with his ship.

‘Let’s get a move on’, Kai commands him, D.O also jumping out of the ventilation and looking at the junk laying in front of him.

‘That’s not a ship’

‘It’s better than anything else’

‘God, and you put the mainframe at the back? Are you kidding?’

‘Listen here Mr Mechanic, I am in the midst of saving you, so stop judging’, Kai grabs his shirt and pushes him towards the opening, sitting him down as he too climbs inside the ship. He shuts the glass deflectors over them and turns on the engine to find the absence of the noise which was always there when he turns on the engine.

‘Why isn’t it turning on?’, Kai whines, smacking the main controllers as he tries to turn it on again but all he hears is a small buzzing before it shuts off again.

‘Because the mainframe is busted’, D.O rolls his eyes, standing up form his seat and turning around, ‘We need to reboot the system and allow it to distress the trauma from the hit it probably experienced’

Kai looks wide-eyed at the way D.O confidently opened the backspace of the ship and worked on the wires and engines without even second looking at the basic anatomy.

‘Where were you whilst we were building this?’

‘Obviously in hostage’, D.O rolls his eyes, squirming when he puts to much force in his arms but he continued to work. Kai, who would usually be oblivious of these notions notice the way D.O would oddly flinch and he, out of curiosity, lifts the sleeves of his shirt up to find scars, all red and gashing, close to infection if they don’t leave quickly.

‘They did that to you?’ Kai gasps, looking around the different scarring and finding some old ones. Before D.O can reply to him they hear shouts coming across the halls, the slamming of doors which cost them to freeze for a moment for being quickening their actions and speeding up the process of starting the engines. D.O quickly reset the wires and turned back to sit next to Kai.

‘Okay Kai, turn the engine on’

‘Kim Kai!’, the door smashes open the pair of them looking out to see Iris standing amongst a sea of guards, their gun pointing at them, fierce and loaded. D.O raises his arms in surrender, not wanting to cause any inconvenience.

‘Iris. I haven’t seen you in a while’, Kai smiles nonchalantly at the captain, ‘How have you been?’

‘And to think you’d disappear right through my fingertips’, Iris smirks to himself, ‘I won’t let you go this time. Not without giving me what you stole’

‘Look, technically, I gave you back your job in the military’

‘As a trash boy!’

‘But you’re still a government official! That’s still something right?’

‘I want my title back!’

‘Well, my hands are a little sticky. My dad isn’t a big fan of me at the moment’, Kai slowly raises his hands, trying to stay calm, keeping his eyes on Iris. D.O on the other hand, follows the direction of Kai’s hands, looking up to see an ejection button placed at the top of the ship.

‘Which is why I’ll take you as my bargain’, Iris smiles at him, pointing at his men to shoot in their direction, ‘i’ll kill your lover boy and drag you back to your father, then he’ll give me my title back’

‘You sure about that? My dad can be a bit of a dick towards people like us’

‘There are no people like us. There’s just people like me and people like you. We can never be the same’

Now it’s Kai’s turn to smile.

‘That’s right. We can never be the same’, Kai gives Iris another wink before pressing the ejection button which sends the ship flying out of Boomerang like it was being sucked by a vacuum.

‘No!’, Kai can only see more of the EXO Army flooding in and pushing past Iris the moment the ship is thrown out of the Boomerang and into space.

‘Turn on the engines!’, D.O screams at him, to which Kai follows through and turns on the power, the control panel opening up and leaving Kai to insert the coordinates of Baekhyun’s ship. D.O, with all his torture and stress climbing into him, feels a little light-headed, but he tries his best to help Kai with the almost breaking ship, twisting back to re-wire and programme some of the back engines whilst Kai continues to look for the coordinates that Baekhyun told him to put in whilst returning.

‘It’s okay D.O, we’re going to get back safely’, Kai comforts the rescued alien, but D.O wasn’t paying attention. He needed to fix the hiccup at the back in order for the ship to continue to move faster otherwise they won’t make it to the ship at all.

The dark space is nothing but cold to them and the further they get away from the bright lights of the Boomerang, the more the darkness engulfs them into nothingness. The ship was moving, but barely and it was only a matter of seconds before an EXO army ship catches up with them or even the Boomerang itself. D.O continues to work at the back, but his arms are aching and blood re-emerges itself from his wounds which had threatened to open the longer D.O uses his arms.

Kai turns back to see D.O struggling, the poor alien’s alien shaking. He reaches his hands out and stops D.O, pulling him back to sit down.

‘Don’t’, he warns him, ‘I’ll get us there safety’

‘I can’t let you do all the work’

‘You’re the one who’s supposed to be rescued, now act like it and sit still’, Kai turns out to see if they have any incoming ships and by the looks of his radar, they probably have about near fifteen coming closer to them. He tries to look around to find a debris big enough to hide behind, but all of them were small and orbiting too fast for the ship to catch up. He stirs the ship further away from the Boomerang, using the deflectors so that he’s managed to past one ship that was flying too close towards them, slipping through their gaze and hiding behind them for a bit.

‘Where do we go now?’

‘I just need to find the coordinates saved by Baekhyun. It will lead us straight there’

‘He probably left it in the laptop, just choose the second option’

‘I have, but the ship isn’t moving. Why isn’t this ship moving?’, Kai kicks at it, feeling it shake convulsively at the process. D.O, also curious as to why the ship is on stop mod, looks down on the laptop to see where the coordinates should be taking them, only to squint his eyes harder and try to read the map clearer.

‘It’s not moving, because we’re here’

‘Excuse me?’

‘The coordinates are directed here’

‘That can’t be right. Baekhyun said that he had placed new co-ordinates specifically to get us back into the – Argh!’, Kai shouts when he feels a tugging, the ship being forced in immense speed as it is sucked in by something.

The ship crashes into the walls multiple times before landing on the ground, the deflector glass shattered and engines bursting into overdrive, almost setting itself into flames had it not been for Chen and his fire extinguisher spraying it all over the ship and getting it all over Kai and D.O.

‘You actually made it out alive’, Suho comments, smiling at Kai as he sees D.O sitting next to him, alive and good.

‘I told you I would’, Kai spits out the foam in that had managed to get into his mouth, the rest of the crew laughing at the state of him covered in white.

‘Why are you guys here? We could be spotted… There are at least fifteen ships heading in our direction’, D.O points out, standing up only to not feel his legs, falling straight to the floor.

‘Hang in there son’, Xiumin races up to pick up the poor alien, Sehun also walking to the rescue and lifting D.O up, letting the small alien lean on him for support. Xiumin pulls out a torch and holds onto D.O’s face, flashing the light on D.O’s eyes checking his pulses and rolling up his sleeves and shirt to look at the wounds.

‘He’s in shock and his body needs medical attention now’, Xiumin comments, Sehun gasps at the deep scars which were still raw and bleeding, looking out for Kai, his eyes frightened as he scans the soldier’s body to see if any harm.

‘It looks like they tortured him before I got there’, Kai sighs, wiping his face from the white foam, standing up and stepping out of the broken ship, ‘Now where’s Chanyeol? We need someone to know how to wound up an infection’

‘He’s in the upper deck with Baekhyun. It seems like they have a plan to get out of here without anyone noticing’

‘And what are their plan?’

‘We don’t know’, Sehun replies to Kai as he sits D.O down on the nearest chair, ‘They haven’t told us’

‘Haven’t told us? Why haven’t they told anyone? This was a rescue mission, which meant we need to work as a team’

‘And as a team, I trust Baekhyun’, it was Suho to break Kai’s raising voice, the Captain bending down to roll up D.O’s trousers to see more scars, ‘We’re currently in a blind spot which means no ship can detect the ship with their signals. It was only Baekhyun who knew about this blind spot’

‘So what’s his plan? To hide out here until all the ships are gone from the Milky Way? Are we honestly going to leave D.O injured and without care until that time?’

‘No, we’re going to plummet into a different planet and seek help there’, their argument is interrupted when the door opens and Chanyeol is seen walking in, rushing towards D.O’s side with a first aid box probably taken out from one of Baekhyun’s compartments.

‘Plummet to a different planet? How are we going to do that without breaking the ship?’

‘Oh, the ship will break’, Chanyeol adds on, ‘But if this plan works, we’ll be able to fix it when we land on Earth’

 _‘On Earth?!’,_ they shout simultaneously to the cyborg. They all looked at Chanyeol as if he was crazy. They cannot just land on Earth like it was any other planet. They had a law which forbids them in entering Earth without a pass.

And only a lonely scavenger has ever broken that law.

‘We’re not going in a planet that is under extreme protection from the whole galaxy. We cannot afford to cause a mess in there. We’ll get found within seconds’, Kai shouts at Chanyeol and the rest can only approve in silence.

‘Just trust Baekhyun. He’s got it covered. We’ll be safe’

‘And how can you guarantee that?’

‘Because there’s already someone waiting for us’

 

 

Lay looks down on his phone to see the message sent from Suho. It was an early morning but as soon as he hears his phone beeping, he couldn’t help but to check it just in case Suho was able to contact him again. It had been three days since Suho has called him and he was getting worried that he had gotten himself in trouble, or worse, be dead without Lay’s knowledge.

He didn’t know why Suho was asking him to be in this particular co-ordinates at this time, but he knew it was important and his sense of duty, despite retiring, never truly went away. So he wakes up in the break of dawn and drives all the way out of the city and into the countryside, making his way to the destination of the coordinates which was by a field in the middle of nowhere. It probably took three hours to get to the nearest gas station and another hour to the nearest town so Lay was all by himself, the morning breeze cold.

He called in sick for work and he knew his manager was going to give him hell for it. But for once in a long time, he didn’t care about what his manager thinks.

Maybe this is the best place for the signal. There was no interference and it had as much space for Suho to pick up Lay’s phone. Maybe he wanted to speak of something important.

He waits for another five minutes, looking down at his phone and waiting for the inevitable call. He reads Suho’s message, again and again, waiting, anticipating.

 

_TO: LAY_

_WAIT FOR ME AT 0.10, -0.01._

 

What could Lay be waiting for but a simple message? So, he continues to look down and wait for another beep.

Little did he know that the message would take into a form of a falling ship. He sees the shadows forming right beneath his feet, forcing him to look up to see a massive crater, a ship he had never seen before, hovering above him before crash landing right in the middle of the field. The impact of the crash forced strong winds to fly the fallen leaves an branches around it, a gush of wind hitting Lay in the face and almost sending him back. The loud crashing could be heard from miles away and Lay prays that no artificial satellite had picked up on the foreign object which had smashed landed on Earth.

Lay continues to look ahead, seeing the crashed ship, all broken and steaming. He watches as the gates open and figures start to limp out, carrying each other out into the safety of the soft fields.

He sees the flutter of the same brown hair swept across the fair skin. Suho holding onto two aliens, placing them safely down on the ground, coughing rather loudly as he screams for the others to follow him down. He watches as he counts each of the aliens, his eyes frantic before relaxing after confirming to himself that everyone was right here, okay and alive. He watches as he breathes a sigh of relief and falls onto the ground, closing his eyes and holding on his knees. He watches as he finally looks around his surroundings to try and see where they are, his head turning until it stops mid-motion, freezing at it makes contact with him.

He watches Suho as he sees his captain for the first time in years, standing no more than 100 metres away from him.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, it’s been months since I’ve even touched this fic and I’m sorry for that. This isn’t so much as a recent update since I’ve had this chapter buried in my computer for about three and a half months unfinished and I only managed to finish this chapter today.
> 
> If you follow me on twitter, you’d know that my updates are slow due to work and school and honestly, I have once again failed to balance it so I’ll only be updating this and my other stories during my Christmas break, but I thought I might as well upload this chapter before I go into another hiatus.
> 
> Thank you for enjoying this story and I can only apologise for leaving it hanging for so long.


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